Water project brings relief to KwaMkhize village residents

A three-and-a-half-hour drive from the Pietermaritzburg Airport in KwaZulu-Natal is KwaMkhize village in the Drakensberg mountain range and considered a key crane conservation hotspot.

In this village, the cattle roam freely between the lush green grass fields, while children play in the yards and there is hardly a vehicle on the gravel roads that were still muddy and flooded following recent heavy downpours.

Since 2023, the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Crane Foundation has rehabilitated three springs and installed four water collection points for KwaMkhize community members.

At the Abambo tribal council of chief Dumsani Skhakhane, village community leaders said access to water in the community remains a big issue.

A community’s dream

But they are starting to see some benefits from the project. The community said their dream was for every household in the village to have access to water, especially the elderly people who struggled to collect water.

They said not only did the quality of water improve, but also their crops and the quality of the food they cooked.

“In the past, it was difficult for us to collect water from open water resources that we had to share with our livestock, which led to water-borne diseases,” a community leader said.

Another community leader added: “We used to wake up early in the morning to get a little bit of water because if you got there late, you wait for hours for a bucket to fill. Now that the water is on our doorstep and the fact that there is water all the time, it has improved our time and made our lives better.”

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The community leaders also said the collection point was beneficial for children, who now had more time for homework because they didn’t have to walk as far as in the past and didn’t have to wait hours to fill a bucket.

On the other side of the village three sisters Nosipho, 11, Xolisiwe, 18, and Olwethu, 20, walked shoulder-to-shoulder, each with a bucket on their heads with enough water to cook, drink and wash for the day.

The sisters said since the water is closer to their house, they collected water twice a day and sometimes have to wait two hours to get water from the source because the water pressure is low.

Rehabilitation and pollution control

Senior community field officer at the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Crane Foundation, Samson Phakathi, said 469 individuals benefit from the rehabilitation of the third spring in the village.

Phakathi and the organisation has constructed a number of spring pollution projects and said it was eye opening to see how a project can have a positive impact on people.

“Previously it was very difficult to access water. At times people had to drink the same water as their livestock, so this has improved their lives a lot,” he said.

“They also save the time it took them to collect water compared to the past.”

Phakathi said the aim was to encourage communities to become part of the programme to make it sustainable.

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“These communities are participating fully, from the leadership to ordinary people on the ground. These types of projects were benefiting people equally,” he added.

Phakathi said the project not only addresses the issue of access to water, but also serves to protect the cranes in the area.

Changed lives

A resident Lindiwe Mabaso – who received her first collection point three months ago with clean running spring water – said the project has made their life easier as water was more accessible.

“It was extremely difficult to walk from here to the source of water because of the rough terrain,” she said.

Mabaso, who has lived in the village her entire life, said while the residents were happy for the water collection point, some elderly had to walk more than 500 metres with 20 litres of containers.

“I collect 20 litres twice a day for my household of eight people for cooking and drinking,” she said.

For washing and watering their crops, she added, they collected rainwater and from streams. Mabaso said previously she had to collect the 40 litres she needed a day from the mountain.

She is now happy to be living close to a tap. “Now I can send my children to collect water, but before it was impossible to send them into the forest on their own,” she said.

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Community seeks further expansion

The feeling among residents was that they preferred to stay in the village, not only because it was more expensive to live in the cities but also because farming with livestock was a way of life for them.

Another resident, Thokozani Xaba, said they really appreciated the first tap in their part of the community, but said they needed more taps.

Xaba said the community has discussed possible proposals of placing taps on the other side of the street, but it was tricky because the pipes could not run through a resident’s property as it may cause tension among the residents.

For now, there is no schedule or rules to collect water and there are passersby and residents of neighbouring communities that also come to collect water.