Yesterday's "Business Report", confidently and prominently, had me speaking at the SACS briefing yesterday! I am well aware that our delivery of water and greenery to South Africa is taking place at a cracking pace, but there are limits even for us. It is not always possible to do everything yesterday. So I hope you will excuse my appearing before you today, as planned all along by SACS.
Taking our cue from President Mandela's opening speech, we at Water Affairs and Forestry are able to say that we have laid the foundations, and we are now hard at work building.
The real business of these SACS occasions is your questions, so I shall merely list some issues and projects with which we are busy:
1. BREAKING THE WATER SUPPLY BACKLOG is and always has been our main short-term objective. I am able to announce that the millionth person to be given ready access to fresh, safe water, is just around the corner. And South Africa can justly celebrate the fact. If project implementation continues at its present brisk pace, it should be a million up by Easter, or soon thereafter. What an Easter present!
It will mean that, with the Government in power for 1 000 days at the end of April, the tally of people given water will stand at no less than 1 000 a day for the full period of the Mandela Administration. There are still probably more than 11 million unserved people, those who suffer the daily indignity and exhaustion of having to walk for hours to carry water immense distances. But our confident belief, with RDP and other projects coming on stream at an increasingly brisk pace, is that one half of the backlog should be broken within a few years, and the balance a few years after that.
2. Our REVIEW OF THE WATER LAW is moving into its final phase, with a National Water Bill expected to be tabled in Parliament by August. This is a fundamental reassessment, and in that sense a small revolution, offering all South Africans, for the first time, equity in access to water. We shall seek the principle of some for all, and not all for some. Outdated, preferential and wasteful practices will end, but it should be noted that there is no intention to endanger the productiveness of the rural economy.
3. Hand-in-hand with the above will be a companion measure, the WATER SERVICES BILL, to be introduced earlier. For the first time, water supply and sanitation services will be provided in a national framework designed to achieve equity, efficiency and sustainability. Our approach will be one of developmental regulation, coupled with support to provincial and local government.
4. My Department has been associated with efforts to devise a credible and effective NATIONAL DISASTER MANAGEMENT system, and a Ministerial committee, which I have been asked to convene, is to report to the Cabinet on the subject within weeks. Disasters such as floods and drought, and all the other calamities which can befall people, have to be, where possible, anticipated, and/or tamed, and the effects quickly dealt with.
5. The LESOTHO HIGHLANDS WATER PROJECT is going ahead as planned, and the first highland water will reach South Africa early in 1998 or possibly late in 1997, depending on the outcome of the tests on the tunnel system. The political situation within Lesotho is naturally a cause of some concern to us. Moreover, decisions about further phases of the Project will have to be taken during the year, in the light of our needs, our capacity to conserve the water we already have, and our contractual arrangements with our brothers and sisters in Lesotho.To enable us to build and run further large projects that might be needed in the future, I have asked four business leaders to advise me on the formation of a national water utility. I believe this could allow us to undertake new projects without using Government funds, in line with the objectives of GEAR.
6. In the realm of FORESTRY AND THE GREENING OF SOUTH AFRICA, we are acting with determination. Communities throughout the country are being encouraged to plant trees to provide shade and wood fuel and, indeed, to improve the quality of life and thereby lift people's spirits. After two years of consultation, my Department published the National Forestry White Paper in March 1996. The National Forestry Action Programme was launched in August, focusing on three sectors: community forestry, industrial forestry and natural forests and woodland.
It is worth mentioning that our Department has been involved in the planting of about two million trees since mid-1994, and the annual rate of planting is about a million a year. But we have now put things in a totally new gear, by agreeing with the provinces on an imaginative programme that will see the planting of a further 10 million trees and thus will do much to change the physical face of both rural and urban South Africa.
An issue of immediate and critical interest to business and labour is the restructuring of Safcol, which must be completed by November.
At the end of January, a successful and pioneering workshop on forestry was held in KwaZulu-Natal to investigate with stakeholders from all affected sectors how to develop an integrated and sustainable approach to forestry development in the region.
7. The drive to ensuring a smooth-running and transformed Department remains a bureaucratic challenge. The authorised establishment rose from about 6 000 to 32 000 because of the reincorporation of former "homelands" structures, though this is expected to drop, through attrition and other factors, to 27 000. In all, about 500 "ghosts" have been laid: people drawing double pay or people who did not exist except on paper, etc.
The policy emphasis of the Department is being transformed so that conservation and the management of water demand should gain more prominence in our activities. We are pursuing a coherent, practical programme of employment equity, agreed with personnel at all levels, so that those previously excluded are, where practicable, given preference - but not to the point where our critical function of delivery is compromised. I am pleased to release today - surely a first in any Government Department - the annual report of our Employment Equity Committee.
The public commendation that the water and forestry effort has received is due largely to the efforts of countless dedicated officials committed to one thing: Delivery.
8. Last but not least, indeed of overwhelming importance to our country's future, the NATIONAL WATER CONSERVATION PROGRAMME is forging ahead, with its imaginative invasive aliens eradication, with new-found and critically important municipal cooperation by towns such as Hermanus, and impactful schools and TVprojects. The chances are that, through conservation, we can reduce water consumption by up to 30 percent - saving money on capital projects, and pushing well back the date at which South Africa will face a water emergency. The law can only provide the framework and direction. The conservation campaign provides the energy and equipment to move us all down a sustainable road. We need, and boldly ask for, the support of the public, the media and, very particularly, of local government, in this great national task.
9. It should be noted, also, that ADVISORY COUNCILS for both water and forestry have now been established and have got down to productive work.
At your disposal today is a two-page summary showing our progress in all our many functions during 1996/97, and our plans for 1997/98. Time does not permit me to go into detail now. Copies of our annual report are also available.
To sum up, our objectives are simple: Delivery, delivery and more delivery.
Thank you..
Issued by the Ministry of Water Affairs and Forestry, 11 Febraury 1997