Water crisis: Mpumalanga village receives borehole donation

As lovers celebrated love and shared gifts on Valentine’s Day, the impoverished rural village of Vaalbank in Mpumalanga received a communal borehole that was funded by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and the Angel Network.

Dr JS Moroka local municipality’s community has been without running water and had to rely on water tankers for years.

The community of Vaalbank met before Ephraim Mashaba’s house, where the borehole was installed and to officially receive the borehole from the SAJBD and the Angel Network.

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‘Thankful’

“We are so thankful for this donation. Most people are unemployed and it is now better that parents will not be using their money to buy water instead of food,” Mashaba said.

A local medical practitioner, Dr Lesley Bradburn, sourced the funding for the Mpumalanga community.

Bradburn cared for the Vaalbank community during the Covid lockdown by distributing food parcels and medication.

He also ran a soup kitchen, feeding scheme and other initiatives as he worked with the tribal elders. “Despite the existence of a dam directly adjacent to the village, the water supply via municipal taps remains highly erratic due to a number of reasons,” Bradburn said.

“The befouling of the water by hundreds and hundreds of animals and during summer the dam dries out completely due to the extreme high temperatures experienced in the region which can often reach 40ºC.”

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Borehole will come in handy

One of the residents, Lydia Mashaba, who often works with Bradburn, said the borehole will help them. “We are living in a very dry place where we hardly have water.

It is better these days that we have been showered by rain in the past three days, but I can tell you that this borehole will help us in various ways,” said Mashaba.

“This simply means that we will be able to drink water without being charged a cent and we will be able to grow our own vegetables and water our plants.

Every person in the village will benefit from this initiative.” Another community member Prince Mngomezulu said: “We thank the SAJBD and Dr Bradburn because our lives will be much better as we will not wait for the rain for us to get water.

“We used to place basins and tanks on the corners of our houses so that we could draw water whenever it was raining. From now on, we will get clean, underground water.”

‘Gratifying’

SAJBD national director Wendy Kahn said “there is nothing more gratifying than to bring water for a community that has none”. “This borehole will be life-changing for this Mpumalanga community,” she said.

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