Lesotho Mega-Dams: Monuments to Inequality and Corruption
Tue Sep 28, 1999

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.]