The PRIVATE Sector

White Gold

Right in their backyard
Just down the road from the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Sandton, home to the World Summit on Sustainable Development venue (see pp 4-5), a human and environmental tragedy is being played out that has nothing to do with sustainability and everything to do with big business’ push for profits at any cost.
Though just a few miles from Sandton, Alexandra is not a wealthy suburb. It could fairly be called a shanty-town; a settlement of largely self-built homes of poor black Africans, hardly changed since the apartheid era, where unemployment and AIDS are rife. Some of the homes have mains water, but since the city’s water services were sold off to French-based multinational Suez (formerly Suez Lyonnaise) the bills have tripled and many people can no longer afford to keep the water flowing. Instead, they are drinking untreated river water, making it hardly surprising that in February 2001, Alexandra fell victim to a cholera outbreak which claimed four lives. The government’s response? - Start evicting the squatters. In an ironic shift, former anti-apartheid activists in Alexandra and Soweto have turned to resisting water privatisation as the new threat to life and dignity.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project
So why have water prices increased so much? Much of Johannesburg’s water comes down the Vaal river from the highlands of the tiny, landlocked country of Lesotho, redirected by the first two of a series of huge dams. It is these dams, the Katse Dam completed in 1998, the Mohale dam completed in 2001 and the other four planned dams which cost the money.
The Lesotho Highlands Water Project was first conceived in the mid 20th century, but only seriously developed in the 1980s. The World Bank funded the project in spite of sanctions against South Africa, because it was technically dealing with Lesotho (then a military dictatorship). Although the African National Congress opposed the project during the apartheid era, they adopted it after taking over the SA government.

The dams are not good news for the people of the Lesotho highlands. Much of Lesotho’s economy is based on subsistence farming, but the dams have flooded valuable agricultural land in the river valleys - the Katse Dam alone displaced several thousand people, most of whom ended up moving to the slums of the capital city, Maseru, or to villages further up the mountains where there is no spare land for them and, ironically, often no water supply. People who were formerly self-sufficient farmers are supposed to be compensated by food handouts. Lesotho is currently on the brink of famine, like much of southern Africa, and has begun soliciting food aid - a fact perhaps not wholly unconnected to the flooding of farmland… Meanwhile, a study of the rivers downstream of the dam shows severe pollution, death of fish and vegetation and increased spread of human and animal diseases - all a result of decreased water flow

Construction of the dams produced some temporary work for the locals, but the well-paid jobs mainly go to outsiders - unsurprisingly, few in the mountain villages have engineering or construction skills. The contractors are a consortium including Balfour Beatty, who have been involved in a corruption scandal in Lesotho, and French firm Spie Batignolles, the part-owned subsidiary of AMEC, also involved in the planned Yusufeli Dam in Turkey.

The money-flow story is anything but equitable. The poor of South Africa pay inflated prices for water, from which Suez creams off a profit before passing it on to the Lesotho and South African governments, bypassing the displaced poor of Lesotho; the governments then pay the contractors and World Bank loan repayments - the money ends up in the pockets of Northern multinationals and banks.

Back in Johannesburg, activists are equally concerned about the water-flow: literally half of the water from the dams doesn’t even make it to consumers’ taps because the pipe system is so poorly maintained - so much water escapes that it is actually disrupting the scrubland ecosystem around Jo’burg. As well as reversing privatisation, on the principle that water is a human right, campa igners are calling for the dam project to be halted and the money diverted to fixing leaks and promoting water conservation measures.

The next phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project is currently on hold, though campaigners are worried this may be just a ploy to produce an appearance of sustainability for the period of the World Summit.

This article is based largely on the excellent video ‘White Gold’ - contact Corporate Watch for details if you would like a copy of the video or more information on this topic.