HOEDSPRUIT – After more than a decade of dry taps, broken promises, and mounting frustration, residents of Kampersrus are finally celebrating the arrival of clean running water in their homes.

This long-awaited breakthrough follows years of delays, infrastructure failures, and unanswered cries for help that left the Limpopo community relying on unreliable boreholes and water tankers, sometimes going weeks without a single drop.

“It feels unreal,” said Pieter Gerber, Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) councillor, who has been pursuing the project ever since he became a councillor. We have suffered for so long. Now we can live with dignity. I have now had a glass of water in my own house, and the residents are happy. The water has been tested and everything is in order,” he added.

The road to this moment has been anything but smooth. The Kampersrus Water Scheme was first initiated in 2010 to supply water to the growing villages of Kampersrus and Hoedspruit via a comprehensive purification and distribution system.

By 2017, officials claimed the project was 98% complete, yet the taps remained dry.

The Herald reported in April 2023 that residents were still without water due to constant breakdowns at the two boreholes the community relied on. In May 2023, a public meeting brought hope when Mopani District Municipality (MDM) promised to install a long-overdue transformer by the end of June and to fix borehole pumps within two weeks.

Residents, however, were sceptical; many had heard these kinds of promises before.

That scepticism proved warranted. By September, nothing had changed. Gerber lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission, citing the community’s constitutional right to water. Despite a budget allocation of R19m for 2023/24, there was no visible progress.

In November 2023, the situation worsened as Mopani’s broader bulk water projects came under scrutiny. The R60m Sefofotse-Ditshosine scheme, intended to include Kampersrus, was reportedly inactive, and other villages like Bellevue had seen no water for years.

“This has been a story of failure,” Gerber told Herald at the time. “Failure of planning, failure of delivery, and failure of leadership.”

It was not until early this year, after intense pressure from residents, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and FF, and oversight bodies like the SAHRC, that progress began to materialise. MDM finally commissioned and installed the correct transformer. Damaged pump stations were repaired, pipeline connections were completed, and pressure testing began.

By July, clean water began flowing to households across Kampersrus for the first time in over a decade.

Residents will now shift focus to holding the municipality accountable for the continued maintenance of the system and expanding access to neighbouring villages still without a consistent water supply, Gerber said.