FEATURE |‘ We won’t vote without water’: Limpopo villagers forced to drink from filthy puddle - EWN

Thirty-two years into South Africa’s democracy, some of the country’s most remote villages are still forced to drink dirty water from rainwater puddles.

Eyewitness News travelled to Phugwane village near Malamulele in Limpopo, where water had not flowed from communal taps in more than a decade.

Residents loaded buckets onto wheelbarrows and walked almost two kilometres to a puddle of discoloured water.

The same rainwater is also used by animals, with cow dung visible near what had become the community’s main source of water.

The small village was hidden deep within Malamulele’s dense vegetation, with a 30-minute drive along a gravel road needed to reach the community.

There, communal taps lined the streets, but not a single drop flowed from them.