If you are hunting for votes what do you use as bait? A white elephant! Especially one used successfully before that is now even bigger.
Who cares if it is actually called a hippopotamus (the Mzimvubu Project), and being staked out by a new minister of water affairs who has just completed 10 years of outstandingly unsuccessful land reform.
According to the minister’s spokesperson in last weekend’s Dispatch, the “multipurpose conjunctive project” is in Pondoland (the Mpondomise will be interested to hear).
It could start in January 2019 and be completed by September that year – thereby setting a new world record for major dam construction, but just in time for the 2019 election. (One hopes the purported Ntabalanga Dam in the Dispatch photo with its mud wall is an early design model).
The Mzimvubu Project was announced in 2006 by then Eastern Cape premier Nosimo Balindlela for 50,000ha of irrigation, 300,000 jobs, and water transfer to the Gariep for Northern Cape grape farmers.
In 2009, she said it was to provide universal water supply for OR Tambo by 2014.
In 2013, it was a priority in the State of the Nation address. In 2014, purely by coincidence a month before the national election, President Zuma turned the sod at Tsolo, now to cost R12bn but create only 6,700 jobs and to be completed by 2018.
By 2018, the white elephant has grown, as they always do, to R16bn. But no one knows how to pay for it – the department of water affairs is bankrupt; the minister of finance says no more government loan guarantees, so let’s abandon tenders; the PFMA [Public Finance Management Act], avoid these awkward processes by getting an international loan from China. Which of course means Chinese construction, Chinese materials, Chinese jobs. The latest is that the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority will do the job. Huh?
The piles of departmental documents are happy dealing with dam design and associated technical bits of roads, pipelines and so on. Whether the DWA still has the engineering expertise to supervise the implementation is now doubtful, according to a former DG. The 8,000 dongas in the catchment may keep them busy too.
The 1,800km of water supply pipeline managed by Amatola Water will supply OR Tambo with expensive bulk water which they can sell to the 726,600 indigent rural users. The hydro-scheme will provide electricity, but Eskom refuses to buy it for cash, only credit. The 50,000ha of irrigation is now only 2,450ha; but the plan is for 60 40ha commercial farms situated on communal land, presumably expropriated. They will need perpetual government support. Have they never been to Ncora, Qamata, Tyefu?
The only positive to emerge so far, is the unique co-operative research effort of more than a hundred university researchers and graduates centred at Rhodes University, supported largely by the national department of environmental affairs over the past three years. With serious community involvement they are providing results on erosion, catchment land use, village level opinion, fire management, rehabilitation of vegetation and stakeholder communication.
But a highly unhappy picture emerges when it comes to land issues, public participation, and worst of all, economics. None of the components stands up to economic analysis, even in the DWA’s own documents.
The expensive project will need to be subsidised by government forever. White elephants are not as much fun as what they appear to politicians wanting votes...