In an example of very bad timing, Grahamstown's water supply has been interrupted, leaving thousands of Scifest visitors and residents disgruntled and disgusted.
In an example of very bad timing, Grahamstown's water supply has been interrupted, leaving thousands of Scifest visitors and residents disgruntled and disgusted.
Although the city's water supply has been unreliable in the past, the past two weeks have seen some long, widespread outages hit most areas.
Residents and visitors alike have turned to social media to find out what's going on, to share and compare updates and to vent their frustration.
Apart from the outages, residents have also complained of low water-pressure and muddy brown, yellow or white tap water.
On Monday morning, Algoa FM posted a Facebook update pointing to a burst pipe at the Howieson's Poort pump station as the cause of the most recent outage, which started on Sunday.
Speculation on the issue is rife, but the municipality has been quiet.
Andy Walker, using the Twitter handle @reddevilandy10, said: "#MakanaMunicipality Nothing on your website about the water issue? Do people even work at the municipality??"
Although most social media posts about the water outages reflected residents and visitors' frustration and anger, some people chose to look at the funny side of things.
"Apparently water in Grahamstown will be back by 15:00 so all these punks don't have any excuses for these funny scents of theirs anymore," quipped Chumani Somyalo, or @CSomyalo14, on Twitter.
"Just had another "bath" in the pool thanks to the lack of water in #grahamstown #makanaIsUseless," read a slightly more caustic post from Luke Fowler @lukefowler1991.
A feeling of hopelessness and frustration reverberates across these posts, but Facebook and Twitter updates have helped Grocott's Mail establish the extent of outages, as well as the different problems residents were experiencing with water.
Our reporters continue to convey this feedback from the public to municipal officials, in the hope of getting answers.
