Nolindile Ngqina lifts the carpet in her shack and the stench combines with Tuesday's scorching heat in a disgusting assault on the senses.
Nolindile Ngqina lifts the carpet in her shack and the stench combines with Tuesday's scorching heat in a disgusting assault on the senses.
"Every time you take a step on the carpet, water comes out," Ngqina says." You can feel the mud underneath the carpet as you walk around the house."
She says the floor of her house is constantly soaked in sewage and she has to regularly ask her grandchildren to clean the carpets, because the more people walk on the floor, the more the stinking liquid seeps up through the carpet.
Ward 3 councillor Marcelle Booysen was taking Grocott's Mail on a walkabout, in an effort to expose the living hell Ngqina and other Zolani residents experience.
As if the 32-degree heat and plagues of mosquitoes weren't enough, they wade through sewage inside and outside their homes.
They even leave their doors open when they go to work, so that when they return they're not overwhelmed by the fumes.
Booysen said approaching Grocott's Mail was a last resort.
She said following numerous text messages and phone calls from residents complaining about the situation, she had raised the problem with the municipality.
But, she said, nothing had been done.
It's rubbing salt in the wound for the residents: they're well aware that the sewage come from homes with flush toilets, while they use pit latrines.
It pours out of three manholes above the shacks, which sit on the slope above the Bloukrans River.
The residents say that while there's occasional relief from the situation, the leaking episodes have recurred frequently over several years.
The shacks are cheek-by-jowl – yet Grocott's Mail discovered that getting from one to the other without wading in sewage was almost impossible.
"We have become used to walking in this stuff," said resident Fikiswa Lubuzo, removing her shoes.
"We take off our shoes and just walk on it. It's fine because we have to – but you have to wash your feet afterwards."
She was showing Booysen some of the most severely affected households.
As she put down a wooden plank to make a temporary crossing, Lubuzo said, "In summer it gets even worse because it's hot."
Wednesday was 32 degrees in the shade – and Tuesday was only a degree or two more bearable.
Mosquitoes breed unchecked where the foul liquid pools.
The hardest, says Lubuzo, is raising children in that situation.
"My sister has a 22-month-old baby and her baby is already sick because of growing up in such an unhealthy place," she said.
Booysen, frustrated at her inability to draw a response from municipal officials, said residents in her ward were starting to blame her for what was happening.
"I have tried to get the municipality to address the problem but nothing has been done, so the community thinks I am not doing anything," she said.
Acting municipal manager Thembinkosi Myalato said on Wednesday that the municipality was aware of the situation.
He said the sewage lines didn't have the capacity for the demand they were servicing.
"We do go and clean the manholes constantly, but I think it's a capacity issue because it continues to happen," he said.
Myalato said the inspection covers had been built with a specific number of households in mind, but the number of households being serviced had since increased.
He said a team of plumbers had been dispatched to look at the problem on Wednesday.
