Boitumelo Tshehle

Editor: The Weekender

When Deputy President Paul Mashatile visited Dinokana village outside Zeerust this week, he found a community relieved to see a national leader but worn down by decades of unfulfilled promises. The message he received was painfully simple: give us water. Not a slogan. Not timelines that stretch into the next election cycle. Just water that flows when a tap is opened, electricity that stays on, and a state that remembers its people after the cameras are packed away.  

For years, Dinokana and surrounding villages in Zeerust have lived with broken promises. Clean water, a constitutional right, arrives not through pipes but on the backs of municipal water tankers, in most cases from water tankers appointed by the municipality to deliver water to the people. Even so, some days pass without a single drop.

Government departments speak of interventions, upgrades and millions allocated. Yet for households that plan their days around water tanker schedules, these commitments feel abstract. The tragedy is compounded by how emergency solutions have become permanent crutches.

 Nowhere is this clearer than in Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality, where the Auditor-General issued a rare certificate of debt against a municipal manager over millions lost in a water tankering tender. That decision was historic, but it also confirmed what communities already know: that while they ration water, public money meant for relief is too easily misused.

 Parliament has acknowledged that municipalities are failing at water delivery and has spoken about new governance models and oversight mechanisms. These conversations matter. But for families in Dinokana, accountability delayed is dignity denied.

And this is where the crisis becomes deeply personal. Water insecurity is not an abstract policy failure; it shapes daily life. It affects children trying to study by candlelight, parents queuing for water instead of work, and households stretched thin by uncertainty. As the country awaits the release of matric results in the coming days, that pressure intensifies.

For many young people, especially in rural and struggling communities, matric results arrive heavy with expectation, sometimes unbearably so. In homes already burdened by service delivery failures, a disappointing result can feel like the final blow. We have seen, too often, how this moment can push vulnerable pupils into despair.

To the matric class of 2025: you are more than your results. You survived load shedding, water shortages, disrupted schooling and a country still finding its feet. Breathe. Speak to someone. Know that one exam does not define your future.

But to those in power, the message is equally clear. A nation cannot expect excellence from its children while failing them at the most basic level. Before asking young people to carry the country’s hopes, the state must first deliver water, dignity and trust consistently, honestly, and now.