Sithintheni Village, in the former Transkei Homeland in the Eastern Cape, is a very poor community with no amenities like electricity, telephone, not even pits latrines. There are no medical facilities, not even a mobile clinic. In addition to a shop and a Methodist church, the only infrastructure in place is a primary school. The community relies on seasonal subsistence farming and old age state pensions. It seems that as there are no local governments social development plan for the village, the prospects of improvement in the living conditions is minimal.
During a Participatory Needs Assessment exercise, water was identified as amongst the major need of Sithintheni community. Indeed, considering the distance the water source was from the village and uphill, their quest was quite understandable. A feasibility study facilitated by ELCSA-DS identified the water source as two underground springs. The study proved encouraging and positive, and thereafter the community elected a Water Committee to work with ELCSA-DS to secure the necessary permission from local government. Local government agreed to the proposal and even agreed to pay for unskilled labour. As far as ELCSA-DS was concerned, it was made clear that it does not pay people to help themselves.
In addition to the initial Water Committee, the community surprised many by intensifying its participation through election of a Management Committee to be actively involved in the planning, management, implementation and monitoring of the project. Such action was quite significant and reduced time spent on site by the engineer and the project cost.
The project too four and a half months of hard work to complete the project. The following statistics gives account of the determination of the community:
The impact of the of the project was summarized by a member of the water committee when she said “ not only do we as women no longer fetch water, our children do not have scabies (a skin irritation) any more, and cases of diahorrea has decreased” The chairperson of the committee keenly added ‘ some of us have cultivated home gardens now that water is available”.
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