Niki Moore
There have been more than 100 deaths. There have been more than 52 000 reported cases. Cholera is cutting huge swathes through the rural populations of KwaZulu-Natal and it appears no one has a plan yet.
The regional councils of Ugu and Uthungulu, who were given the task of establishing structures to combat the epidemic, have not yet come up with concrete proposals despite the fact that the national government has given them R35-million that must be spent before March 31. The Ugu Regional Council has identified where toilets have to be built, but of the 4 814 that are required only 120 have been completed.
Uthungulu engineer Eddie Reynolds said workshops will start on February 26 to decide where action should be taken, and what kind of action.
“We have put certain emergency measures in place, but we will only be able to start meaningful work once we have begun our workshops.”
The first case of cholera was reported in a rural area just outside Empangeni on August 15 last year.
Initial efforts to arrest the epidemic, including delivery of water tanks by the defence force, proved insufficient. In the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s own words, it made two mistakes: “We thought that if we supplied clean water, it would solve the problem. We realised that you cannot give people safe water without giving them safe sanitation as well,” says a departmental statement.
Providing clean water is the easy part it requires only one government department. Providing sanitation is a different matter altogether it requires the cooperation of the departments of housing, local government, health, education, water and environmental affairs. A multi- pronged approach is vital but time-consuming.
The second error was more understandable: “We thought that if people were educated about the dangers of poor sanitation, this would generate a demand for sanitation improvements. This approach has not proved particularly effective to date.”
The peculiar psychology of the rural poor had not been taken into account: despite a full knowledge of the deadly bacteria that lurks in standing water, children still play in puddles. And if the water tanker is a bit late, the household will still go and get water from the stream.
On February 18 Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils announced that R15-million would be given to the Ugu Regional Council and R20-million to the Uthungulu Regional Council.
However, the instruction is that these two regional councils must spend the money before March 31 and this is where the slow bureaucratic grind of local government might derail its own process.
Neither the municipal manager of the Ugu Regional Council nor Uthungulu Regional Council were able to produce any concrete development plan for using the money.
Earlier this week the Uthungulu Regional Council engineer presented to the department of water affairs a broad strategy outlining what should be done. In essence it means doing an inventory of boreholes in afflicted areas and seeing how they can be upgraded. They have also pinpointed locations for pit latrines. The idea is to provide the building material to the home-owner to build his/her own latrine.
Central government feels that supplying safe water is an attainable goal. From July 1 this year all households will get their first 6 000 litres of water a month for free.
Over the next three years R2,2-billion has been put aside for the provision of water and hygiene education to 2,4-million people in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Northern Province. About 300 000 people will have access to sanitation.
But first the six government departments have to take a good hard look at their sanitation policies. And the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, leading the initiative, has resolved to move a lot of responsibility to the local government councils. There appears to be an inkling of uneasiness over whether the local governments might be able to cope: the department has earmarked as a priority the establishing of support structures and guidelines for local government.
The goal is to supply toilets to 200 schools and 6 500 households. No one is very confident that this can be done within the deadline.
Existing qualified and experienced staff are overstretched and are working themselves to exhaustion.
A recent World Health Organisation report criticised the department for its lack of progress in providing water and sanitation in cholera- affected areas. Kasrils said that the department was taking the report seriously and stated that, “we might have made mistakes, but we are learning from them”.