South Africa: Two warriors die, alongside the right to water

Photo retrieved from: www.links.org.au

“Manqele’s water war

Meanwhile, a few hours drive down the coast in southwest Durban, Manqele was working closely with the late Fatima Meer, sociologist Ashwin Desai and Westcliff Flats Residents Association leader Orlean Naidoo to help unite Chatsworth’s African and Indian residents in what became the Durban Social Forum, no easy task given the area’s divided history, desegregation dynamics and acute race/class tensions. In 1999, Manqele became ill, lost her job and saw her municipal arrears reach $1300.

The first water disconnection by city authorities was in January 2000. Manqele explained in the documentary film, Plumbing the Rights, “That man came now to close the water. I haven’t got water after that I haven’t got food too, and then I’m thinking one way may be to sell my body there, I’m thinking food again to I’m thinking I can’t got there to prostitute me I’m old. All night I can’t sleep and high blood pressure is high.”

Chatsworth activists then helped Manqele illegally reconnect the pipes, allowing her and the seven children to consume more than the 25 litres per person (two flushes of the toilet each) that the city was allegedly supplying free each day. But as Naidoo recalled, the water only kicked in once arrears were cleared: “What kind of free water service is that – when people can’t afford to pay their daily bill, how are they going to pay off their arrears to get their free water? So that’s just a false hope.”

The turn to illegality was demonstrated on film by Chatsworth organiser Brandon Pillay, later elected an ANC city councilor: “There’s a copper disc that’s placed inside of this pipe and that actually shuts off the water so what we do is we just try to open up this pipe, and on opening this pipe we just remove the disc and then we have water.”

Manqele told the filmmaker a few months later, as cholera joined the diarrhea and AIDS pandemics, ” “That’s why me now I go back there to open the water… I’m scared for the cholera and then I need the water because me my condition… and I’m worried for the children, the suffering of the children, that’s why now if I never did that thing [illegal reconnection] now I’m going to die, I can’t stay without water.”

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