Residents of Nompumelelo and Ducats believe the Buffalo City Metro is taking their basic right to clean water for granted. Residents of the two settlements say they are lucky to have tap water for a day, or at most, two days a week. They say communal tanks also run out, leaving them high and dry.
The newly elected Dr WB Rubusana regional executive committee suspects that water and electricity infrastructure is being deliberately sabotaged by what they term business syndicates. It says the syndicates are “hell-bent on benefiting from the crisis that comes with such water and electricity outages”. This week, regional secretary Anele Lizo said they would soon instruct municipal authorities and Amatola Water to conduct an extensive investigation into suspicions that infrastructure was being deliberately sabotaged around the city.
Bulelani Kubusi, the owner of Lloyd Laundry in Ducats North, which is severely affected by water issues, fears that his business, which uses about 5,000 litres of water a day, will shut down. Kubusi said the area had always had water problems, but the outages became persistent in 2023. On Thursday, Kubusi said they had last had water two weeks ago.
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“We are still a developing business and we depend on clients. We are running at a loss because we have to fill two tanks (2,500leach) for R1,000… “It becomes a loss when we don’t make that money back,” Kubusi said. Residents in the area protested several times in 2025, burning tyres on the N2 and N6 routes to no avail.
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