WATCH: Community loots amid ongoing protests in Parys

Tumahole community members in Parys started taking to the streets from Tuesday to express their concerns over lack of service delivery in the Free State town.

Members of the police’s public order policing unit from Sasolburg, Welkom and Solesheswa were still in Tumahole this morning, reports the Parys Gazette, and have continued to monitor the situation.

They report that 31 people were arrested yesterday in Tumahole for public violence.

On Wednesday, tyres were burnt and roads blocked in Tumahole, with reports of disruptions on the R59 Parys-Sasolburg road overnight.

In the video and photos below, community members can be seen looting a Boxer supermarket, running off with products along the protest-charred street. It’s understood this happened on Thursday morning, but it could also have happened on Wednesday.

OFM News reported that community members were protesting over the lack of housing and other service delivery issues. There were also serious concerns about the quality of services, especially the tap water.

They allege the municipality has, for years, failed to allocate them proper sites or built them RDP houses. Residents blocked routes leading to the town with stones and burning tyres.

Picture: Supplied

Picture: Supplied

The protests in former premier Ace Magashule’s hometown have come just days after residents voiced their concerns about the continuous lack of water and electricity supply during the DA’s campaign trail on Saturday.

The town of Parys, together with Denville, Heilbron, Koppies, and Vredefort, fall under the financially troubled Ngwathe Local Municipality.

This municipality is one of the Free State municipalities currently highly indebted to Eskom. It owes the power utility nearly R 1 billion.

Reports about the town’s “toxic sludge” also made headlines this week.

A resident from the Parys area of Schonkenville, who did not want to reveal his identity, said the water quality had been a problem for 15 years.

“At Schonkenville Location there’s no water at all for four weeks now. As for Mandela Square and Old Location, you’ll find brown stinking water and, in Ghana Location, you’ll get black water like oil. At times we do get clear water but it is difficult to drink because it still smells like a rotten egg,” he explained.

“If you don’t have money to buy water to drink and to cook, you should know that your health is at risk because you’ll have no choice but forced to drink and cook using the same stinking water. We are also concerned about our children at schools because you’ll find the same situation at schools.”

Storms churn up sludge

A water purification plant was recently built at Tumahole – allegedly at a cost of R39-million – but this had not improved the situation, say residents.

While Ngwathe municipal spokesperson Steve Naale said he could not disclose the amount of money spent, he confirmed that plant had been built.

“We have encountered some challenges of distributing clean water due to heavy rains and storms because of the lightning which has struck the cable of the water purification plant,” said Naale. “Due to this, we end up having a sludge at the bottom of our reservoirs, then residents experience the brown or black water.”

Naale added that in many places “we are still using old asbestos water pipelines and unfortunately they cannot handle pressure as the population increase in some areas, so for that reason they burst and we have to substitute with the modern pipes”.

However, Benoit Le Pen, CEO of Water Shortage SA, says that the source of Parys’s problems is the sewage that is polluting the Vaal River upstream from the town.

“The SANDF has been deployed at Emfuleni where 150 million litres of sewage per day was going into the Vaal,” said Le Pen.

Municipal water purification plants are not designed to cope with that level of contamination, added Le Pen.

“Some of the sewerage contains methane and hydrogen sulphide, which is highly toxic. It settles as sludge at the bottom of the Vaal. But when there are storms, this sludge gets churned up and sucked into the pipes. It settles in the reservoirs at the treatment plant then gets into the water system,” said Le Pen.

“Contaminated water is a slow killer. But it will kill people.”

(Background reporting, Health E-News and OFM)

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