Swaneville sewage spill leaves residents trapped on sinking land

Hazardous sewage leaking from the Swaneville and Mogale City sewerage system has left residents trapped on sinking land.

With around 24 houses affected, flooding caused by a suspected mine dam water, made worse by heavy rain, saw a pipe at a nearby sewage pumping station burst, subsequently swamping nearby homes.

Started in 2019

Despairing resident Kgadi Fele said the situation was difficult and scary. According to Fele, this started in 2019 and after the heavy rain, the matter worsened.

Fele said the flooding, which pushed water levels further into their home, was reported to the authorities but they seemed to have no solution.

Empty promises

“The councillor, human settlements minister, the mayor and the MEC have all met but they keep making empty promises. We have been waiting for them and we are still stuck in this situation,” she said.

“We were promised since September last year we would be moved but that still has not happened. Our houses are flooding up day by day and no-one has solutions.

“Others have moved to flats but we can’t move like that because we can’t even afford to do so.”

Fele said the sewage and the stench of it caused several hardships and sicknesses among the residents.

“Do they expect someone to die first before they start doing something about this?

“We are sick; our children are also getting sick. The moisture we are forced to live in; our children are getting infected and no one is doing anything about this.

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“We are highly infected. When it gets late, the mosquitoes that bother us here are unbearable because of the floods and sewage.”

Structures more than one metre in dirt

Some homes were standing more than a metre deep in the filthy water. Another resident was forced to move out and abandon her home due to sewage leakage flooding her home.

Margaret Naledi described the dire state of the flooding as stressful and depressing. She said the water situation was an ongoing problem which should have been resolved and it was now mixed with the sewage leakage, leading to more problems.

“It started bit by bit but it has got worse. It should have been resolved after the mine dam burst but now that also affected the operation of the sewage station,” Naledi said.

“We reported this matter in time but authorities failed us.” Naledi said she did not know what to do or who to turn to as she did not even have her home anymore.

“My child is not well, she got into an accident and now I am forced to raise her in a situation like this. I saw it is better to get out of that house because I cannot raise a child [here].”

‘Hardest thing to deal with’

Naledi added she had no idea how this would be resolved. Sounding defeated, Boyce Mqweba, who stays with his father, said the flooding situation was the hardest thing to deal with.

“My father has tried with all efforts to build us a home and now we are forced to move out because of this. We do not know what we will do,” he said.

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“He is on pension now, so we cannot even come up with another plan.” Mqweba’s home was flooded; with no entrance to his home and his car submerged as well.

“Now we need to find other ways to get out of the house. It is really hard and I do not know how we will overcome this,” he said.

“Almost everything in the house is ruined.”

No accountability

Residents have marched to the office of the mayor in Mogale City to hand over a memorandum of demands and claimed their attempts to alert the authorities before and after the incident fell on deaf ears.

Mayor Tyrone Gray and councillor David Witbooi were expected to provide an update yesterday but were a no-show.

– lungas@citizen.co.za