The Cholera Outbreak: A 2000-2002 case study of the source of the outbreak in the Madlebe Tribal Authority areas, uThungulu Region, KwaZulu-Natal

Poverty was a common thread that ran through all the areas surrounding the Ngwelezane Township from which the initial reports of the cholera outbreak were reported. The Madlebe Tribal Authority stands in incongruent proximity to the industrialised heartland of the KwaZulu-Natal province, its population shifting with the changing thirst for labour.

Unemployment is endemic and the majority of people live below internationally accepted benchmarks of absolute poverty. The water-borne epidemic, however, was specifically indicative of a serious failure of governments policy on water and sanitation provision. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) also concurred that there was a causal relationship between the cholera outbreak and persistent poverty. However DWAFs overemphasis on the poverty factor in the cholera outbreak tended to clear its own water policies of any fault. DWAFs exposition on the cause of the cholera outbreak seemed to deliberately omit factoring how its cost-recovery water policies impacted on the spread of the cholera epidemic in the poverty stricken rural communities of Madlebe and the greater uThungulu region.