Nkantolo Water Initiative

The Foundation’s flagship community development project is the Nkantolo Education Project, which has for the last five years, provided sanitary towels and hygiene packs biannually to roughly 3000 pupils at four schools in the area.

It is of the utmost importance to the Foundation to improve the quality of life for the people of Nkantolo through the provision of long term and self-sustaining access to safe drinking water, sanitation and ablution facilities, with a view to fight COVID-19, in the short-term, and improve overall health and hygiene of the community, in the long-term.

Partnering with Nozala Trust, the Mbizana Local Municipality and Kusini Water to ensure the effective distribution of water, we decided to make the local clinic – Qobo Clinic – the site for the first installation. Kusini Water developed and implemented the infrastructure for the project. Kusini Water was established in 2016 and is a 100% South African, black-owned, technology company that makes water purification systems from locally-sourced macadamia nutshells and nano-fibres. Kusini Water has developed a mobile, rapidly deployable, water treatment and management system that distributes water in rural and drought-hit regions in South Africa in a cost-effective manner.

The project commenced on the 3^rd of August 2020 at Qobo Clinic and was completed on the 30^th November 2020. It was and is essential for the Foundation to employ local artisans and service providers from the communities in which we operate. This is local community members assisted with plumbing, building, digging and the electrical work. To ensure that the proper maintenance of the systems that we put in place, selected community members were trained in how to operate and maintain the machinery that was installed.

We are thrilled to announce that Qobo Clinic now has:

• Borehole with submersible pump,
• 4 Faucets
• Drinking and hand-washing station
• 5 Tanks with booster pumps
• 5 Drainage and water-catchment systems
• 1 water treatment facility which purifies 2500 litres of water per hour

As we embark on a new year, still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic which has wrought so much devastation on our country, we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring a better life for the people of Oliver Tambo’s home village. There remain an additional four sites that still do not have water, all of which are schools.

If you would like to support this project to ensure that all the schools in the area have access to clean running water, please email natasha@tambofoundation.org.za