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dam-l LHWP article in Green Left Weekly/LS
This is a bit old, sorry for the delay.
-----Original Message-----
From: Green Left Parramatta <glparramatta@greenleft.org.au>
Date: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 1:57 PM
Subject: Lesotho megadams: monument to inequality
> The following article appears in the latest
>issue of Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au),
>Australia's radical newspaper.
>
>*****************************************************
>
>
>
>Lesotho mega-dams: monuments to inequality and corruption
>
>By David Letsie
>and Patrick Bond
>
>JOHANNESBURG -- The apartheid-era South African government's
>decision in the mid-1980s to commit R15 billion (US$2.5 billion)
>of the Johannesburg-Pretoria metropolitan area's future income
>into two unnecessary, destructive mega-dams -- the Lesotho
>Highlands Water Project (LHWP) -- has come under renewed
>criticism in the wake of corruption revelations.
>
>In a court case in Maseru, Lesotho's capital, LHWP ex-chief
>Masupha Sole was accused of a decade-long spree of bribery. After
>an intensive legal struggle over access to Swiss bank records,
>corporations representing the who's who of the dam-building
>industry were implicated in backhanding Sole several million
>dollars. Allegations of corruption have followed the same
>corporations from Kenya, Brazil, Paraguay, Guatemala and
>Argentina, where bribery claims led President Carlos Menem to
>label dams ``monuments to corruption''.
>
>The firms include transnational corporations ABB of Switzerland,
>Impregilio of Italy and Dumez of France (owned by water
>privatiser Lyonnais des Eaux).
>
>LHWP corruption is the tip of the iceberg. The scandal has
>brought to public attention a deeper problem: Johannesburg does
>not need and cannot afford Lesotho water.
>
>In 1998, the World Bank's internal inspection panel rejected a
>formal submission by three residents of the impoverished black
>Alexandra township. This pointed out that, thanks to the LHWP,
>Johannesburg's formerly white suburbs are drowning in water,
>while black townships are dehydrated.
>
>Affluent white people get too much water (on average, seven times
>as much as black households) at a price that is too low, and are
>not interested in conserving water. Too much is used for keeping
>gardens green in winter and filling swimming pools in summer.
>
>Low-income black people in Alexandra and other townships are
>subjected to indiscriminate water cut-offs, one tap for every 50
>people in most areas, inadequate water pressure and leaky pipes.
>While services are decaying, the water bills of Alexandra
>township residents have soared, due almost entirely to the LHWP.
>
>Across Johannesburg, low-income people pay a disproportionate
>share for the Lesotho dams. Even the World Bank has acknowledged
>that while Johannesburg residents' water bills rose on average by
>35% between 1995 and 1998, the bills of people with the lowest
>consumption rocketed by 55%. The adverse effects of unequal water
>distribution on public health, ecology, gender relations and the
>economy are well documented.
>
>Notwithstanding extensive publicity about government plans for
>water conservation and improved water access for the masses,
>there has been no apparent improvement.
>
>Worse, alongside bureaucratic lethargy concerning water
>redistribution, the next phase of planning for the LHWP has
>already begun. (There are five huge dams in the original World
>Bank scheme, making the LHWP Africa's largest ever construction
>project.) A promised government study of water conservation and
>demand management is nowhere near completion.
>
>Recent meetings with the government and the World Bank in
>Pretoria, and a trip to the Lesotho dam site by concerned
>Alexandra residents, demonstrated that legitimate township
>grievances about water distribution are still not being taken
>seriously. Bank staff refused to address even the
>demand-management issue.
>
>Yet officials of the regional water distributor, Rand Water, last
>year estimated that the current dam construction could have been
>delayed by up to 17 years, saving R800 million (US$133 million)
>per year, if water conservation was taken seriously.
>
>The bribery unveiled in August may have a silver lining if it
>refocuses the public eye on the dam builders. And if corruption
>disqualifies some firms from supplying bulk water, as has been
>threatened, it will alert South Africans to possible corruption
>in retail supply.
>
>Lyonnais des Eaux and other French and British water companies --
>some of which were introduced to South Africa through deals in
>the 1980s with the bantustan (homeland) administrations and are
>putting massive pressure on town councils to privatise water and
>sanitation services -- have been implicated in corruption
>scandals in other parts of the world (Jakarta, Manila, Buenos
>Aires, Gary, Rostok).
>
>The water giants are extremely anxious for the massive
>Johannesburg privatisation plan -- iGoli 2002 -- to move forward
>despite opposition from trade unions, consumers and many key
>members of the African National Congress.
>
>World Bank task manager John Roome, in a secret internal document
>a year ago, wrote that the ``project provides an opportunity to
>advance the debate that not all big dams are necessarily bad''.
>Activists, experts and journalists are arguing the contrary to
>the Cape Town-based World Commission on Dams, using examples in
>the northern hemisphere -- where decommissioning of dams is now
>under way -- and south-east Asia and Latin America.
>
>Big, expensive dams are especially bad in the Johannesburg
>region, where water consumption patterns are indefensible and
>politicians at all levels have not yet attempted to reverse the
>inequality underlying the bribery and corruption now indelibly
>associated with the LHWP.
>
>[David Letsie is an Alexandra activist. Patrick Bond teaches at
>the main university in Johannesburg, Wits.]
>
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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