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Case Studies
Mangodi – LP0212
Donor: ONE Water & The Co-operative
Nearest town: Thohoyandou Limpopo Province, South Africa
GPS Coordinates: S22 56 33.5 E30 36 42.5
Date installed: 15 January 2008
Date visited: 15 February 2008
In the northern reaches of the Limpopo province where iconic baobab trees stand like sentinels over thousands of years of myth and legend, live the Venda people of South Africa.
The history of the Venda tribe can be traced back as far as 800AD when their civilisation thrived at the ancient city of Mapungubwe for over four centuries before moving their centre of power and trade to Great Zimbabwe. The stone ruins and gold artefacts of Mapungubwe – now preserved as a cultural heritage site – tell of a highly developed civilisation, very different from the picture today.
About a million Venda people remain in the northern Limpopo area with the town of Thohoyandou – meaning ‘head of the elephant’ – still serving as the region’s capital.
During the Apartheid era of South Africa, Vendaland was declared an independent homeland and was autonomous from South Africa. While this allowed the people of the region to preserve their rich culture and customs, it did not spur economic growth. Vendaland remains a largely rural area dominated by subsistence agriculture, indigenous bushveld and free roaming wildlife.
Mangodi is a typically styled Venda village marked by traditional circular huts clustered together for protection and raised off the ground. Each household may build three to five huts to keep lodging separate from cooking or home industry activities.
The population of Mangodi is about 200 consisting mainly of women, children and the elderly.
Many of the young men have had to seek work in far away cities and rarely see their families. Polygamy is still practised as part of the culture and it is not unusual for men to have one wife in the homelands and another in the city. The legacy of migrant labour and traditional marriage customs contributes to the presence of HIV /Aids in this isolated area.
Water is the most important theme within the Venda traditional belief system. Modern VhaVenda people still make offerings to the ‘zwidutwane’ or ‘water spirits’ they believe to live at the bottom of waterfalls and inside watery caves. When the Luvuvhu River approximately three kilometres south of the village of Mangodi, became polluted with Cholera and stopped flowing during the dry months, Cecelia Mambasa saw it as bad omen.
“We had an old hand pump in the middle of the village to help us get enough clean water for our cooking, bathing and washing,” said Cecelia, “but only one person could draw water at a time and the queue would be long.”
When a PlayPump® water system replaced the old broken hand pump, Cecelia saw conditions improve. Of the village’s fifty or so children (between the ages of 4 and 12), the PlayPump® system has become a daily meeting place for them to come and play in the mornings and to hurry back to when the school day ends.
But the children are not the only residents making use of the system. The women who stay behind to tend to their crops and their households have realised how much easier the roundabout is to turn if there is more than one person sitting on the wheel. The additional water they are able to collect in the storage tank from hours of accumulated play has helped free up more time for other chores like collecting firewood.
Some of the women have even started micro enterprises like the brewing of traditional marula wine, made from the local fruit and water from the PlayPump®. Marula trees grow prolifically in the area and the fruits are well known to be favoured by elephants also favoured by elephants.
“Our children are healthy and we know longer have to worry about the cholera and crocodiles in the river. Our children are safe.”
The women of Mangodi village
Cecelia Mambasa (seated) and her family showing how many pots need to be filled with water for the daily chores.
