ENVIRONMENT: Swaziland Stands Up to Polluters

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Oct 28 2002 (IPS) - When a major distillery received word that it was being sued for polluting a major river by the Swaziland Environmental Authority (SEA), the company was so astounded it wrote to Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini demanding an explanation.

Implied in the letter was a suggestion that government’s desire for foreign companies to invest in the kingdom was more important than environmental concerns.

– After an investigation by the full cabinet, government finds the lawsuit appropriate, and gives its backing to the Ministry of Environment, Tourism and Communications," the Prime Minister’s office replied in a press statement.

The lawsuit is the first major test case mounted by the environmental authority. The defendant is a firm in the eastern lowveld that processes the area’s sugar crops into molasses.

ôThere was some question whether the SEA was legitimate, or a fakeà," an Mbabane attorney told IPS.

But rather than being a non-entity intended to give the appearance of doing a job, the SEA appears to be pressing ahead with investigations.

The molasses distillery wrote a letter of apology to environmental minister Stella Lukhele for questioning the lawsuit. The minister said the case would proceed. As desperately as government wishes new businesses to tackle a national unemployment rate of 40 percent, cabinet has set its environmental verses commerce priorities.

ôThe reason is tourism," says Ted Reilly, executive director of Big Game Parks of Swaziland. ôIn coming years, tourism will become more and more important for the economy. Visitors want to see a clean and attractive country, free of pollution."

Until this past decade, air pollution was restricted to a few smokestacks discharging impurities into the skies above the Matsapha Industrial Estate in the nation’s heartland, where most of the country’s manufacturing is located.

But a massive highway construction programme underway since the early 1990s has led to an upsurge of users. The number of private and commercial motor vehicles has increased 50 percent since 1998. Because of the country’ s poverty – two-thirds of Swazis live below the poverty line û many cars on the roads are older ôscraps" that are heavy polluters.

There are no fines for poorly tuned cars that spew blue clouds of exhaust, and for the first time the previously pristine nation is seeing brown atmospheres shroud Mbabane. The capital is situated in a mountaintop bowl. The mountains surrounding the upscale Ezulwini Valley suburbs to the east also trap auto pollutants, and the central commercial hub Manzini on warm days with stagnant air is veiled with car and industrial pollution from the nearby Matsapha industrial park.

Polluters have seriously compromised the water purity of the Lusushwana River that flows through Matsapha. Runoffs from insecticides used for large-scale commercial agriculture estates are tainting some streams.

ôThe first step is to monitor the pollution, and find out where it comes from. We don’t even know how the groundwater is replenished in some areas, whether it’s from rain or some other source," says Richard Lushaba, a hydrologist with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The Taiwanese government has given Swaziland a grant package to purchase pollution monitoring equipment. ôAccess to clean water is enjoyed by only half of the population," the United National Development Programme noted in its 2002 survey of Swaziland.

An expanding population is putting pressure on Swaziland’s environment. The kingdom has one of the world’s highest birthrates, creating more stress on water supplies. Despite a public education campaign mounted by the health ministry to encourage rural and peri-urban residents to dig pit latrines, about 40 percent of Swazis use the bush for their toilet. This percentage includes residents of informal township settlements in urban areas.

The result is an annual outbreak of cholera. ôWhen the rains fall, the faeces are washed into the streams, and the bacteria count rises. Boiling water is a luxury some people cannot afford in areas where firewood is scarce because the people have cut down all the trees," says Lushaba.

If there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of a looming drought, which some meteorologists with the National Weather Service now say is imminent, it is that water-born diseases will be fewer.

ôAt the same time, people à dehydrated because of a lack of water à will be more vulnerable to disease," says Dr. Samuel Ndlangamandla, a Swazi health official.

Environmental awareness is growing in this small country. Municipal health inspectors were until recently the only watchdogs on the lookout for unsafe food products or unhealthy eating facilities.

A canned fish scare earlier this year saw the Ministry of Health for the first time becoming involved in commercial food sales. A product line of canned fish was removed from stores, and samples were sent for laboratory analysis in neighbouring South Africa. The tainted food scare proved to be a false alarm û the woman who fell sick after consuming some of the suspect fish was actually ulcerous prior to the incident û but the public was impressed by the health ministry’s swift involvement.

That same take-charge attitude exhibited by the new environmental authority is bringing Swaziland into the modern age of air and water resources protection.