
Patients, including pregnant women, have allegedly been forced to use pit latrines and beg for water to drink pills after a Limpopo healthcare facility experienced a water shortage for three consecutive months.
Residents of Hlaniki Village outside Giyani say the situation at the local clinic is so dire that patients are forced to drink water stored in dustbins after the Limpopo Department of Health failed to solve the problem.
According to sources, including insiders and healthcare professionals, patients could hardly wash their hands or flush toilets because of the escalating water crisis.
The problem has forced one resident, Victor Baloyi, to email the provincial health department complaining about the service delivery breakdown and pleading for intervention.
In a short email dated Friday, 6 December 2024, sent to the Head of Department (HOD) Dr Muthweiwana Dombo and seen by African Times, Baloyi said that the Hlaniki Clinic had been without for almost three months. He said the water crisis aggravated the situation of sick patients because they could not wash their hands or flush toilets. Instead, they had to rely on pit latrines.
“With due respect, I am writing this email on behalf of the Hlaniki Community about the Hlaniki Clinic. We do not have water in our clinic, and we did face this challenge for about three months now. We are requesting your help as our borehole is not functioning. If you can assist with trucks, tanks of water to fill Jojo tanks, or make plan B for service delivery in our clinic. All patients that are visiting our clinic face this problem. We will be happy if this request may be taken into consideration within three working days,” Baloyi wrote.

Insiders who cannot be named for fear of victimisation reiterated Baloyi’s assertion that the clinic’s lack of water disrupted service delivery. In an audio recording obtained by African Times, a man believed to be an employee of the Limpopo Department of Health could be heard complaining about the gravity of the water crisis.
The man blamed the department for the mess. He urged residents to stand up before the crisis killed people rather than “allow the department to do as it pleases”.
“Patients, including pregnant women, will be forced to use pit latrines at the clinic, where it is risky. A pregnant woman is not allowed to use pit latrines at a health facility because the flush toilets are not working. We must allow the department to do as it pleases. Now we are going to fight. It is said prevention is better than cure. We cannot wait for an incident to happen; it will be like when a woman gave birth at the gate of the clinic, here at the Hlaniki Clinic. It will happen like when a grandmother from Noblehoek or Block C died in the parking lot of the clinic at the Marula Tree. I still remember that incident; it happened before my eyes, not hearsay. The granny was with her grandchild. She was not helped. We can’t wait for another incident to happen. We want quality services like people in the locations. We want quality services like people at Nkhensani (Hospital). We are all equal under the Department of Health,” the man said in a long audio clip obtained by African Times.
In the audio recording, the man accused the clinic’s management of dragging its feet to solve the water crisis because it allegedly cashed in on overtime resulting from it. He said their decision to allow patients to use “dirty water with worms and pampers” was a sign they did not care about their wellbeing.
“I can’t keep quiet because this thing affects my relatives. It affects me as a Hlaniki resident. If there is anyone who allows the use of dirty water with worms and pampers, it means that person does not care about our lives. They only care about overtime because there is a lot of money when you work at night. It cannot continue like that until the boreholes are fixed. The department has a budget for this. The department has a budget to resolve this matter. If a machine was stolen, there is no way the department can fail to replace that. The department gets allocated the second biggest budget after education in South Africa. They get billions and billions of rands for better services for the people. We need 24-hour services at the facility, but it must be in a good manner. We can’t rush things because of overtime. I will say this anywhere. I am not a visitor here. I am a Hlaniki resident. I will never allow our people to be treated like pigs. I will never allow that,” the man added.

Moses Maubane, the Provincial Secretary of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) in Limpopo, said they are unaware of the specifics of the situation at the Hlaniki Clinic. However, a water crisis was common in Limpopo’s health facilities.
He said various factors compounded the problem.
“I am not familiar with that clinic, but the issue of the water crisis is a provincial issue. Generally, what we did at some point when we met with the department was that they must do boreholes. There are several clinics where the boreholes have been done already. And some clinics do have boreholes, so they rely on municipalities for the supply of water. The challenge that we always get is that there are these generator machines that pump water from the main tank, distributing it into various pipes within the institutions, and many at times there would be a commotion between the employer and management in which management would want to use these automatic outflows. The challenge of automatic outflow is that at night, when there is no need for usage of water, that machine would automatically pump water, and when you come in the morning, you find that you have no water. That is the challenge that we have seen. At some point, they need to do the manual thing where employees operate the machine manually,” Maubane said.
He added: “The management of institutions were actually skeptical that if we do it manually, it means that at some point in time, as an employee, you must come operate the machine and go back, which can affect their overtime budgets. That is basically where we are in terms of water supply in clinics and smaller hospitals.”
African Times sent detailed questions regarding the Hlaniki Clinic’s water crisis to the Limpopo Department of Health spokesperson, Neil Shikwambana, on Tuesday, January 9. Shikwambana noted the questions and asked for a one-day extension, which was granted. On Thursday, he promised to respond but later failed to do so.