Frustrated Durban residents picket at city hall as 'last resort', demanding water after eight years of taps running dry

More than 100 people from ward 105 on the South Coast of Durban picketed outside the city hall on Thursday, 3 October 2024, demanding tap water. They also want their ward councillor to step down.

Last month, GroundUp reported how the 5,000 households in the ward have been without tap water for eight years.

The protesters said they had tried all official avenues before approaching the Right2Know Campaign in April for help.

Right2Know provincial organiser Yolanda Yalezo said: “We were their last resort.” She said they helped the community to draft their protest memos.

Community leader Sikhumbuso Cele said organising the protest was difficult because of the cost of transport from ward 105, which is 40km away on the rural outskirts of the municipality.

Mlulama Ngcobo, from the office of the mayor, accepted the memo and said he would hand it “over to the relevant office”.

Ethekwini Municipality head of water and sanitation, Ednick Msweli, at a joint media briefing with the mayor and council members on Thursday, said the estimated cost (done three years ago) for repairing the infrastructure for water reticulation would be R44-billion. He said tankers were therefore a stop-gap measure and “you are still going to have them for a while”. Tankers were withdrawn as infrastructure was repaired, he said.

Set to continue

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