And let's talk now to somebody who is trying to do something about one of the many problems, challengers, obstacles, hurdles, issues that this country deals with.

We are chatting to Moreenderni Malfumo, who is the founder of an NGO, a entrepreneurial initiative to bring clean water to South African schools, Cossini Water Well in any good afternoon.

Thank you very much for your time.

Can I thank you so so much for having me gust into the listeners, Thank you so much for having me.

What got you to the point where you set up Cassini to do what it is trying to do.

Yeah, so my background is in Watchaus.

I'm a what a scientist so previous lays to work in the public sector before as someone that originally comes from who else South Africa?

As I was born in Vendor Vendor what has always been a challenge, It's always been a topic of conversations, so I guess my entire life, this has always been something that's persistent.

Unfortunately, now many many years into democratic systems, we still have over eleven million people that way have access to safe water and over almost two thousand schools that NOTT have access to clip drinking water and safe hygiene.

Three thousand schools.

I wanted to ask you about the scale of the problem, but you've given me the answer.

There there are just more than three thousand schools that don't have access to safe clean water.

Yeah, in sanitation and hygiene.

So yeah, but that's the job of the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure to fix between them.

They shouldn't have to leave it to people like you.

No, that's true.

And then it's not to say there's not a lot that's happening.

Obviously, South Africa is there's a lot that the government is doing in so many communities.

But as you can imagine, so many rural communities to problems of our past.

So the semny schools, the growth of our population has been quite big, so we having schools where maybe a school is designed for five hundred kids and school with a thousand kids.

So you can imagine the scale of the problem that the government is trying to fix.

So I would say, even if you look at so many countries that are developing a big a big part of it did involve the social sector.

So I would say, yeah, the government does it a role.

The goverment is playing a role.

It's role to an extent.

It's just that it's quite a big challenge that the country faces, even even as we're trying to recover from the from the systems of the past.

So I wouldn't necessarily say no, the goverment has failed its role.

I think the government is trying, but as you can imagine in Popo, in the Eastern Cape in cases, and so many schools right now just trying to get by.

So so so, yeah, it's a challenge.

I think a collaboration between the social sector with government is always an opportunity to solve some of the problems that we have in our continent.

Well, government has failed and continues to fail, I'll say it, but I'll understand why you don't, yeh is what how can you and Cassini Water be part of the solution?

Yeah, I think right now.

So what we try and do is we build systems that are easy for both government, for schools, for communities and for organizations to operate on a long term basis.

Maybe just to put some context, aid based what are projects?

Fifty percent of them fail within the first two to three years, So if you look at the rest of the African continent, where aid has been quite quite the norm, a lot of these water projects fail quite frequently, and the biggest reason why that's the case is it does not take into consideration local context, doesn't take into consideration local ownership and local participation.

So what I think we do well is we do not neglect the local participation.

Local participation includes government.

You cannot neglect government in their both their role as an oversight body but also as a body that can collaborate with starts at scale.

So I think what we do well is we collaborate with local community, with tribal government, youth, unemployed youth to run and operate sustainable systems.

So these systems should be as easy as possible to maintain.

It should be as affordable as possible to run for schools, for communities, and we should bring in other people.

So, for example, if you look at what gives it the givers does well is to bring in community, society, is to bring in donors and big companies to solve a specific problem at that time.

Then what what should happen after that is they should be organizations that continue to sustain and to maintain and to collaborate with government to ensure that those projects continue to run over a longer period of time.

So all of our partners, so we've got big corporate that partner with us.

If you go back to all of our projects, they're still running.

We've partnered with big companies three, four or five years down the line or the projects are still running.

And the secret ingredients is local participation.

How difficult is it to find the right people with whom to participate or to bring on board in that local participation because one often here is that there is contestation around this, that there are power struggles, and there is you know, the potential for access to resources through a partnership like this.

Is that quite a complicated thing to go into a local community and establish who are the people that need to be brought on board that are going to help achieve this aim of having a sustainable solution in place.

Yeah, and I mean specially looking at our country because our country is quite diverse, different different provinces, eleven different languages for cultures and ways of doing things.

So some provinces are better than others.

So in some local government it is much easier to operate it's much easier to find the local players than it is in others.

Uh.

And then the province that you're in the government is very very involved in a way, so we find a lot of access to government participation in your province.

Then we would say, for example, in instant Tipe, where we've got for example, me as a founder can speak close for example, so it becomes a little bit easier to integrate and and to and to and to and to and to find the right partners within within that province.

So it's very much a mixed beat.

But ultimately we we actually developed a model with the Nlson Mandela Investing under the Nilson Mandela Foundation, and the model was, okay, so if you're gonna go into a community, any community, who are the key players that are important to ensure that project runs after that?

What are the key transparency figures such you put in place to ensure that every single person in the community understands that's going to happen, what it takes for that to happen, and what it takes to sustain that.

Because the truth is most communities, when they hear that something is coming that we add vality to their lives, they love it more often than not.

When we communicate that hey we'll bring clean water in your community, that's a great value for them, so they want to participate.

Yes, it's easier in some places than it is in others, but be finding that the model allows us, for one transparency, So we need to be as transparent as possible because again there's a lack of trust in our communities these days.

With our communities have been promised a lot and Joseph comp government has come, big companies have come and there's not much change they have seen.

So we have to establish trust first.

Then secondly the water comes, which is a little bit of an easier part, I would say, but yeah, some provinces are harder than others.

Founder of Cassini Water.

Thank you very very much for talking us through what you are doing.