AFRICA-ENVIRONMENT: Orange River dammed for South African industry

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 1995 (IPS) - Officials from the tiny land-locked kingdom of Lesotho, South Africa, and the World Bank have come under fire for shutting a sluice gate at the bottom of a partly- constructed dam on the Orange river.

The 185-metre-high Katse dam is intended to divert water from the Orange river, known locally as the Senqu, to the industrial heartland of South Africa. It is the centre-piece of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which is ultimately expected to cost eight billion dollars, part of which is being provided by the Bank.

South Africa, which completely surrounds Lesotho, is eagerly waiting for the dam reservoir to fill up as it is the only viable future source of water for the thirsty factories and mines of the region. But activists in Lesotho complain that the project has brought nothing but misery to the 20,000 people who leave nearby.

Khauhelo Raditapole, Lesotho’s water minister, waxed lyrical at the televised ceremony to shut the gate in late October. “The people of South Africa will look at this dam and be filled with hope that its contents will flow into their country for the sake of development. On the other hand, (Lesotho) will look at the dam and say at last the waters of our rivers have turned into the proverbial white gold,” he said.

But activists disagree. “People do not believe that anything good will come from this project; they see it as a monster which will swallow them up,” says Moea Ramokoatsi, an activist with the Highlands Church Action Group, who lives near Katse.

The major beneficiary of the project will be the Transvaal region, home to a quarter of South Africa’s population and half of its industries. Until recently, this region has depended for its water on the Vaal dam.

But regional demand for water has risen by 66 percent over the past decade. This demand, coupled with eight years of drought, has caused water in the Vaal reservoir to drop to just 16 percent of capacity.

The Lesotho project, which is expected to start operations in 1998, will alleviate this by delivering 18 cubic metres of water per second via a complex system of 82 kilometres of new tunnels to South Africa, together with 72 megawatts of power.

As the major beneficiary, South Africa has shouldered much of the project’s cost since construction began in 1986. The Bank, which was banned from lending to Pretoria at the time, skirted that obstacle by giving money to Lesotho.

Ramokoatsi recently visited Washington with Christa Coleman, the southern Africa coordinator for the California-based International Rivers Network (IRN) to ask Bank officials to keep the gate open until local problems are resolved.

“Malnutrition is rampant, AIDs has spread due to prostitution at construction camps, and typhoid outbreaks have occurred. Plans to protect the livelihood of the people have not yet been put in place,” says Coleman.

Ramokoatsi carried letters from people who say the project has disrupted their lives. The Ha-Theko primary school, for example, has lost its vegetable gardens where students planted beans, cabbage, pumpkins and maize. He also cited the case of Majabari Jabari, a woman from the village of Ha Lejone, whose house and grain stocks have been badly damaged by water run-off from the project. She has spent the last five years in a thus far unsuccessful bid for help from project authorities.

Elliot Mainzer, another IRN activist who visited the site earlier this year, said villagers from Ha Mensle claim that their main water supply has been diverted to a helicopter landing pad.

The activists’ concerns are backed up by internal Bank documents. “The mismatch in time between promised improvements and delivering them has increased community concern about whether they are truly to benefit from the project,” says a report prepared by a Bank-created panel of experts.

Activists also complain that the Bank has failed to do a full environmental impact assessment of the project or adequate studies on sedimentation.

Government officials are not happy about the complaints. Kader Asmal, water affairs minister for South Africa, calls the activists “green terrorists.” “We are not going to be told what to do by people sitting in their air- cooled offices in London and Washington while our people are dying of thirst,” he told journalists recently.

Bank officials flew to Lesotho a few weeks ago to investigate the complaints. “Yes, the project has had problems but we are confident that they will be dealt with,” John Roome, who headed up the Bank team, told IPS.

He conceded that the Bank has not done a full environmental impact assessment, but added that the Bank was not required to do so at the time that the initial 110-million-dollar loan was approved in 1991.

“At the time, 30 baseline studies were done and they show that the project is feasible. They show that chances of sedimentation are less than one percent and in fact the levels that have been observed so far are less than half of the maximum estimates,” he said.

He added that the activists are right to be concerned about malnutrition among people who have been displaced but insisted that compensation was never intended to meet their entire dietary needs.

“The people get 500 kilogrammes of maize and 30 kilogrammes of pulses for every hectare that they have lost. New studies have begun to work out how their dietary needs can be met,” he told IPS.

“Yes, health indicators are worse but that’s partly because the roads are better so local people have more opportunity to come to the hospital and complain. What took them 14 hours in the past now only takes an hour by taxi,” he said, adding that the roads have also helped health workers to deliver more services to the community.

“That’s a ludicrous argument,” says Coleman, who adds that the Bank’s own documents show that local people, who have not been given work at the project site, were directly affected by diseases, such as AIDs, brought by the construction workers from South Africa. She also points out that the food is only delivered once a year.

Ramakoatsi says that the Bank-funded employment programmes have not brought useful skills to the local people. “They have taught us carpentry skills, but there are hardly any trees left in my country,” he says.

“The people can take their carpentry skills to South Africa,” Roome replied, adding that activists need to see things in a more positive light.

“The difference between us and the environmental groups is that we see the glass as half full and filling up. The activists see it as half empty and emptying,” he said.

AFRICA-ENVIRONMENT: Orange River dammed for South African industry

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 1995 (IPS) - Officials from the tiny land-locked kingdom of Lesotho, South Africa, and the World Bank have come under fire for shutting a sluice gate at the bottom of a partly- constructed dam on the Orange river.
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