The Real Cost of Johannesburg’s Water

Sterkfontein Dam holds Johannesburg’s reserve water supply.

Whenever the level of the Vaal Dam falls below 18%, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) opens the sluice gates of Sterkfontein Dam near Harrismith. Water cascades into the Nuwejaarspruit, which enters the Wilge River, which enters the Vaal Dam. Not a lot of people know it, but if all the other sources of water feeding into the Vaal Dam were to fail, Sterkfontein Dam alone could meet the water needs of the urban highveld for two whole years.

This extraordinary “reserve” supply is made possible by the Thukela-Vaal Transfer Scheme, which brings water up to the highveld from the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains via a system of dams, barrages, canals and pump stations. Built between 1964 and 1986, the scheme is rightly celebrated as one of the great feats of engineering in South Africa, but less well known is the historical resentment that many who live within sight of the scheme feel towards it.

Water, water, everywhere …

“We are suffering with water, I am not going to lie to you,” said Nosi Tshabalala, a long-time resident of Rookdale on the eastern shoreline of Woodstock Dam. Situated on the Thukela River near Bergville, KwaZulu-Natal, the dam regulates the flow of water in the scheme.

“We have water left and right. We see it on its way to Johannesburg but nobody in this whole place has access to it. Most get their water from a few old community boreholes. Children will go there and wait their turn for three to four hours,” she said.

Another Rookdale resident, Lindiwe Hlatshwayo, was filling 20-litre containers from an outflow pipe in a bridge wall. She said she had no idea where the water had come from, but it was the only water source within walking distance of her home.

“The water isn’t right, it unsettles the stomach, but we have no choice,” she said. She and other residents have complained to their ward councillor many times, she said, “but no action!”

Rookdale families say they are forbidden to take water directly from the dam, though some do.

DWS spokesperson Wisane Mavasa said “raw, untreated water is not suitable for human consumption, as it may pose health related risks [and] therefore, communities are warned not to consume raw water from sources such as dams, rivers and canals”.

Approximately 100,000 people live in the vicinity of Woodstock Dam, under the Okhahlamba Local Municipality, where only one in two people has access to water in their homes.

GroundUp contacted several ward councillors for their response to residents’ complaints.

Ward 8 Councillor Mdeni Mavundla, for Oliviershoek, Ogade, Moyeni, Gugulethu and Bhalekisi, said “water is a nightmare”. He said it has been nine years since residents “last had a drop of water from taps”.

“Our people get water from old borehole hand pumps and the wells. You find that some people have to walk miles to get water. Imagine what happens to the old people who don’t have energy to walk?” he said.

Ward 9 Councillor Sandile Buthelezi, for Zwelisha, said that most of the 25 hand pumps in his ward are not working.

“I think we only have about 14 which are still functioning, but the truth of the matter is that they have never been serviced,” he said.

A canal runs through it

Residents of Rookdale face another issue. The Tugela-Vaal canal (TUVA) splits the community in half.

“We cannot take water from it, yet it is very dangerous. There is no fence, and it is not covered. A lot of people have drowned in it, and animals,” said resident Lindiwe Hlathswayo.

“Two people drowned last year – a 20-year-old shepherd and a child,” said Hlatshwayo.

In 2021, four-year-old Juju Ndaba jumped into the water and drowned. After Ndaba’s death, angry residents prevented the DWS from pumping water into the canal, which is a vital link in the Thukela-Vaal Scheme which takes water from Woodstock Dam via the Driel Barrage to the Jagersfontein Forebay at the foot of Oliviershoek Pass.

Water and sanitation expert Richard Holden explained the significance of this.

“The canal feeds the Drakensberg Pumped Storage Scheme, as well as Sterkfontein Dam. Water does not have to be pumped into the canal all of the time, but when it is needed, it is needed,” he said.

According to Malinga, “guards were placed along the canal in 2021, but they have since been deployed elsewhere”.

Mavasa said that the DWS has since agreed with community leaders that it will procure and install “a specialised security fence along the canal”.

“This forms part of strengthening collaboration with the community leadership structures,” she said.

On a visit in October, GroundUp came across two adolescents cooling off in the canal, watched by younger children.

“We are not allowed to swim here,” said one, grinning.

“Swimming and fishing prohibited”, a sign alongside the Tugela-Vaal canal warns. The canal transfers water from Woodstock Dam and Driel Barrage to the Drakensberg Pump.

The development of the Thukela-Vaal Transfer Scheme required the expropriation of several properties, as well as the eviction of thousands of people living within the basin of what was to become Woodstock Dam. Most of those who were forced to move were residents of Rookdale on the river’s east bank.

“We were compensated with just R350 for residential structures,” said 77-year old Thembinkosi Nkabinde, who received R960 for his “large home with six bedrooms, as well as several other structures”. His friend, Mandlekosi Mlange, who had been a tenant on a Rookdale property, received nothing. The two men were both working in Johannesburg at the time, and returned to find their homes gone and their families missing. They compared notes.

“I remember the night very well. I arrived at 2am from Johannesburg on public transport. I found only the walls of my house, and asked people around where my wife and children were. They told me to go to Dukuza, and when I arrived there the next morning I did not find them. On the third day of searching I found them at Oliviershoek,” Nkabinde recalled.

Mlange said they had no way of knowing about the forced relocations. “A letter from Johannesburg took three months to reach Rookdale,” he said.

Returning with meat he had bought for his family, Mlange arrived to find water where his home had been. “I was told that my home was gone, and that I now live on the other side of the dam, at Zwelisha,” he said.

The 51-metre high earth embankment wall of Woodstock Dam created a gross storage capacity of 381 million cubic metres. Construction began in 1979.

With so many of Rookdale’s male population living and working in Johannesburg, it was mostly women and children who experienced the trauma of relocation firsthand.

“It was a cold day. We were told to get on Government Garage trucks, and were taken to the other side of the river, to Zwelisha,” said Phindile Maphalala. “We were dumped outside shacks, and told that if we did not build our own place within a certain time, they would take back the shack and give it to someone else. My husband and I were newly married, so we had no money for building a home.”

At first a donated school bus ferried children back to their school in Rookdale, but after it broke down Maphalala said the children stayed home.

“In Rookdale we had churches, we had schools, we had roads. The government promised to build these things here in Zwelisha but they never did,” she said.

Nkabinde was dropped with her children and their furniture on Wedge farm, which the government had bought from a white farmer.

“A lot of the furniture was broken because it was not loaded with care. We also had 30 cattle and they were brought over as well, but the moment they were offloaded, they ran back to where we stayed before, and that was the last time we saw our cattle,” she said.

“The dam doesn’t help us with anything, it is only helping people downstream. We want the government to compensate us for the eviction. The money they gave us at that time was not enough. We are still fighting,” said Nkabinde, who is a member of a property owners’ Trust called WOLA, after the four farms where the evicted were relocated: Wedge, Oliviershoek, Lake and Abathengi.

WOLA was created to advocate for a fairer deal for relocated landowners, and has raised several issues with authorities, including the fact that the flooding of the Woodstock basin cut them off from Bergville, the area’s economic hub.

“It used to take ten minutes, using the old D2101 bridge over the river, but they blew up that bridge and it now takes at least 40 minutes to reach town. For those who were relocated to Zwelisha, it is more like 90 minutes,” Nkabinde said.

Maphalala said former Rookdale tenants now living in Zwelisha still talk often about their relocation.

“People have struggled here for 25 years. I know many parents who died and left nothing to their kids. It is a source of pain,” she said.

Livestock wander the roads of Oliviershoek on the west bank of Woodstock Dam.

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