Methane bubbles popping on the river’s surface, sewage pipes clogged with tampons, diapers and toilet paper, and the smell of faeces lingering in the air.
These scenes are everyday realities for residents of Emfuleni – a municipality southwest of Johannesburg – as the breakdown of the area’s pipes, pumps and wastewater treatment plants causes sewage to overflow into one of South Africa’s largest rivers.
As the government announced a major plan in November 2019 to address the wastewater crisis and an ongoing drought, residents told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the seeping sewage is making their homes unliveable and their children sick.
“This is a national crisis,” said colonel Andries Mokoena Mahapa from his temporary office in the city of Vanderbijlpark near the Vaal River, where the South African army was dispatched to assist with sanitation repairs last year.
“We have seen children playing in the raw sewage,” he said. “Old people who can’t buy groceries
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