(21 Mar 2024)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4484364
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Soweto - 18 March 2024
1. Wide Soweto residents collecting water with buckets from a water truck
HEADLINE: Taps run dry across South Africa’s largest city
2. Wide residents placing water onto wheelbarrow and others filling up containers
ANNOTATION: Soweto residents line-up for water as the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, confronts an unprecedented collapse of its water system.
3. Mid of buckets being filled with water
ANNOTATION: A country already famous for its hourslong electricity shortages is now adopting a term called “watershedding” a practice of going without water.
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Lefa Molise, Councillor in Soweto
++PART OVERLAID++
"So far, we have not received, concrete reports or concrete, status or status quo to say when is the water going to be restored. And for as long as we are still stranded or community stranded. We have requested Johannesburg Water, at least to give us and supply us with the water tanks, which, if you look at them calculative and geographical, you will realize that they are not even enough."
5. Wide residents watching as buckets are filled with water
ANNOTATION: Outraged residents call this a crisis years in the making. They blame officials’ poor management and the failure to maintain aging water infrastructure.
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Thabisile Mchunu, Soweto resident:
++PART OVERLAID++
"It has been a serious challenge and very challenging time for my age that I have to be here carrying these 20 liter buckets and the sad thing is that we don't know when our taps are going to be a wet again."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Soweto, South Africa – 16 March 2024
7. Tilt down man filling his buckets with water
ANNOTATION: Water cuts have become so frequent that residents are urged to reserve any supply they can find.
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Bongani Ntshingila, Soweto resident:
++PART OVERLAID++
"As much as we want to things should be maintained maintenance and staff, but communication goes a long way. We wouldn't mind if they communicated to us that during these days and during these times then we could make arrangements. But if in the absence of any communication I would say it's a failure in leadership in a way. We are not lead at all."
9. Wide pan men pushing trolly with buckets of water
ANNOTATION: Rand Water, the government entity that supplies water in Gauteng province, has pleaded with residents to reduce their consumption.
STORYLINE:
Thousands of South Africans have been lining up for water as the country's largest city, Johannesburg, confronts an unprecedented collapse of its water system affecting millions of people.
Residents rich and poor have never seen a shortage of this severity.
While hot weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after decades of neglect is also largely to blame.
The public's frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an election this year.
A country already famous for its hours-long electricity shortages is now adopting a term called “watershedding” — the practice of going without water, from the term loadshedding, or the practice of going without power.
Thabisile Mchunu, a resident of Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg, isn't sure she or her neighbours can take much more.
They and others across South Africa's economic hub of about 6 million people line up day after day for the arrival of municipal tanker trucks delivering water.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
