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Water is so close, yet so far for this Joburg neighbourhood

Thembelihle residents struggle daily to get water, but they watch dozens of water tankers fill up and then drive past

Aerial photo of Thembelihle township. All photos: Ihsaan Haffejee

Residents of Thembelihle, south of Johannesburg, have not had reliable access to water for decades.
The informal settlement, home to roughly 20,000 people, does not receive any water from the dozens of water tankers that are filled up across the road.
Thembelihle has been in a decades-long dispute with the municipality to be recognised as a permanent settlement.

“Every day, I wait till the early hours of the morning hoping that water will come,” says Simphiwe Zwane, a mother and community activist. She has lived in Thembelihle for 30 years.
Thembelihle is an informal settlement south-west of Johannesburg near Lenasia. It is home to roughly twenty thousand people.
The township has…

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