TRANSPORT-SWAZILAND: New Highway Offers Opportunities and Dangers

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

SWAILAND, Jun 28 2002 (IPS) - Sociologists, rights activists, law enforcers and government officials from several fields will be watching the impact of a new highway that will open the northern portion of this small, traditional African kingdom to modern transportation.

The main concern is how customary life among isolated communities will be affected. Secondly, in the rush of tourism, mining and other business opportunities, will the local people benefit, or be sidelined or even exploited?

The Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC) has extended a loan worth Yen 412 million (about 32 million U.S. dollars) to build a new 106-km road that will connect Swaziland with the tri-nation Maputo corridor.

The corridor project is intended to further economic links between Swaziland, South Africa and Mozambique, but thus far Swaziland has been largely excluded because of infrastructure limitations.

Existing industries in the country are ecstatic about the highway. The road will service the commercial timber forests in the northwest town Pigg’s Peak, the citrus industry in the northeast town Tshaneni, and the eastern sugar plantations. The capital Mbabane and the central city Manzini, near the Matsapha Industrial Estate, will also be connected via the new northern route, which will relieve congestion along the central national highway that is anchored by both urban centres.

The area is largely mountainous. A paucity of bridges means residents ford the streams however they can, unless heavy rains raise river levels. When this happens, the area becomes an archipelago of small islands cut off from the rest of the country.

A spider’s web of dirt roads connects hamlets and the traditional Swazi multigenerational polygamous homesteads, the last in existence where people may spend their entire lives on the family farms. Here people conduct rituals to petition ancestral spirits for favourable rains, rely on herbalists for their medical needs, and plough their fields with teams of oxen.

“Much of the Swazi life there is as it was in the 19th century,” says Sandra Nxumalo of the tourism ministry. “This was boring for young people, who have been heading for the towns these past years in search of opportunities. The area has become depopulated. But the potential is there as a showcase for cultural tourism.”

Agrees Darron Raw, of Raw Africa, which pioneered adventure tourism in the country. “The traditional life on a Swazi homestead is just what tourists want to see,” he says.

But will modern life the northern highway will bring as it opens up the area to new commercial opportunities change the very quality of traditional life visitors hope to see?

“Tourism tends to be highly selective in its benefits,” says Nxumalo. “People with money to invest reap profits from recreation facilities and tour companies. But poor mountain people have no money to invest. They end up with low-paying and marginal jobs like hotel porters, dancers and sellers of curios.”

Government has learned from other nations how cultural tourism has sometimes failed to benefit a region’s people. Loan schemes provide start-up capitalisation for any tourism-oriented venture that local people wish to start.

Enterprise minister Lutfo Dlamini says, “These can be small operations, like leading hikers to forgotten prehistoric cave paintings. But they represent business opportunities for the unemployed, and they can instil a business philosophy in a community.”

Mxolisi Shongwe operates the only Swazi-owned tour company, and specialises in backpackers and European tourists. “The mountain folk first have to realise that they are their best asset. They are the tourist attraction. People want to see the way they have preserved traditional life. Community-based tourism in the north has been limited because the area has been inaccessible. That is about to change.”

Agriculture will also change, as relieved law enforcement officials in both Swaziland and South Africa hope. Marijuana is grown by 70 percent of small family farms in the north, according to Charles Pritchard of the Council of Swaziland All and Drug Abuse.

“The area has been isolated, and that is bad because the farmers could not get their wares to market,” says Pritcharords take advantage of this. They provide seed money for marijuana crops, and then sell the harvest in Johannesburg and Holland.”

The marijuana illegally cultivated in Swaziland’s northern mountains is of high quality, and is in demand overseas. But this year’s crop is down 45 percent, says Vusie Masuku, public relations officer for the Royal Swaziland Police Force.

“The opening of connecting roads to the new Maguga Dam has given police access to the fields for our eradication efforts,” he says. The new northern highway will also allow police to locate and destroy marijuana crops.

Illegal or not, the marijuana harvest provides the only income for many Swazi families of the area. The new highway should give needed access to markets to sell alternative crops. The agriculture ministry is aware it must do its part to encourage northern farmers to plant those crops. Otherwise, the area’s poor will get poorer.

“Fortunately, it is difficult to get a mining concession in Swaziland, and mining always takes its toll on an area’s environment,” says environmentalist Cathy Mamba of the University of Swaziland. “But the northern highlands face stress from other aspects of the new highway. The route will be heavily utilised by trucks, and this will bring atmospheric and noise pollution to an area that is now pristine.”

The new Maguga Dam is a symbol of the way mountain resources are taken away from their source to benefit lowlanders. Nearly all the water collected in the dam will be utilised in the semi-arid lowveld on the far side of the country.

Similarly, government policymakers and environmentalists fear that as the mountains are made more accessible by the northern highway, the commercial exploitation of the area will benefit lowlanders, leaving little but an exploited environment for the area’s struggling residents.