Programme Director;
MEC for Economic Development and Environmental Affairs, Mr Mcebisi Jonas;
Your Worship the Executive Mayor of Makana Local Municipality, Mr Zanoxolo Peter;
Councillors;
Deputy Director General of the Branch: Environment Protection and Infrastructure Projects, Dr Guy Preston;
Water Affairs Eastern Cape Regional Head, Ms Portia Makhanya;
Professor Martin Hill and all research partners of Working for Water at Rhodes University;
Professor Roy Lubke and Members of the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Southern Africa;
Workers from the Working for Water programme.
Mr Pierre Joubert and Staff of the Gamtoos Irrigation Board;
Members of the Community;
Members of the media;
Comrades,
Ladies and gentlemen.
I would like to extend a special greeting to our Guest of Honour, Mrs Louise Asmal, who is the wife to the late liberation stalwart, the Stockholm Water Prize Laureate and the first Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry of the South African Democratic Government, Professor Kader Asmal.
I am delighted to join you here this morning as we celebrate this momentous milestone in the history of the Working on Water programme. Today we also observe International Weedbuster Day.
Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen, today we celebrate a most remarkable programme - the Working for Water programme. It took its name from the fact that it creates work, and it makes water available that would otherwise be lost.
Working for Water!
This programme has always been a beacon for the conservation and preservation of our natural resources and it has been pivotal in changing the lives of many of our people for the better. It is through such programmes that we are not ashamed to say that South Africa is a better country today than it was twenty years back.
I want to acknowledge that there are critical water-management challenges facing the Makana Local Municipality and to assure you that we are working around the clock to support the Local Municipality to resolve these problems.
Let me assure you that the Local Municipality, with the support of the Department of Water Affairs and the Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, are putting significant resources, time and expertise in not only resolving the immediate crisis, but ensuring long-term security of water supply, and water quality.
We need your support and partnership in overcoming the problems. Invading alien species can suck the life-blood from our country.
If not managed, they will destroy water security and quality. They destroy through wild fires and soil erosion. Destroy through flooding. Destroy though spreading of disease. Destroy the productive use of land. Destroy the ecological functioning of natural systems. Destroy game. Destroy stock. Destroy fish. Destroy jobs. Destroy human lives.
On this day, 18 years ago, Professor Kader Asmal, the then Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, first cut down an invasive alien plant on the banks of the Theewaterskloof Dam that supplies water to Cape Town and surrounding farmers. This launched the Working for Water programme – a programme to control the problem of invasive alien species, and to create work opportunities for previously unemployed people, especially from marginalised groupings.
From this relatively small beginning, has been built what is said to be the biggest conservation programme in Africa, and one of immense value and return on investment for the country.
The initial, once-off grant of R25 million from the RDP has grown to being part of a R8.4 billion programme over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework for the Environmental Programmes, of which Working for Water is the biggest programme.
It was also the pioneer and forerunner for all of our Expanded Public Works Programmes and Community Works Programmes, which provides jobs to thousands of previously unemployed South Africans.
Today is the eighteenth anniversary of the official launch of the Working for Water programme. It is a tribute to the memory of that great South African revolutionary, Professor Kader Asmal. It is an honour to share the stage with his widow, partner, fellow anti-Apartheid activist and confidant, Comrade Louise Asmal. It is also a tribute to the Ministers that have followed Professor Asmal, in the continued championing of this remarkable programme.
Today we also celebrate in recognition of International WeedBuster Day. Invasive alien species are a problem in every country and every ocean on earth. Species are being introduced into parts of the world where they did not evolve, at rates thousands of times greater than at any point in the history of the earth – and often with devastating consequences.
I want to make several statements regarding the work of the Working for Water programme here in the Makana Local Municipality.
(Working for) Water is Life
Earlier this morning, the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Southern Africa erected a plaque at Gray Dam, honouring the work of the Makana Local Municipality and the Working for Water programme, in controlling invasive alien plants in the Grahamstown area. We visited the Spring that many local people use to stock up with the sweetest water, and heard from Professor Fred Ellery of Rhodes University (an old friend of mine from the Working for Wetlands programme) how the clearing of invasives in the catchment of the spring has sustained this fountain of life-giving water.
It is a microcosm of what Working for Water is doing throughout the country.
Working for Water Provides Jobs
About 25,000 jobs have been created per year through the Working for Water programme. This year it will be over 40,000 jobs. These are jobs for previously unemployed people, with a particular focus on the marginalised – by race, gender, age, disability, people living in rural areas, those living with HIV and AIDS, and more. Jobs, and especially jobs for young people, in a world that is still facing massive human population growth, cannot be over-emphasised.
It is the cornerstone of our ANC-led Government’s policies and programmes, and Working for Water and its sibling programmes deserve particular credit in what has been achieved in this regard.
Working for Water Empowers
This morning we visited the breeding ponds for biological control agents against water hyacinth, the world’s worst waterweed.
This Working for Water initiative is implemented by Professor Martin Hill and his Staff – and almost exclusively disabled workers – at Rhodes University. Biological control is a crucial aspect of the fight against invasive alien species, introducing the natural enemies of invasive species, and this year South Africa celebrates 100 years of bio-control.
It has proven to be a fantastic return on investment, and is one example of where the Working for Water programme has empowered and trained hundreds of young South Africans – most of them previously disadvantaged – in this field of science. One of them, Dr Julie Coetzee at Rhodes, not only found a career in bio-control research, but also a husband in Professor Hill, undoubtedly with mutual empowerment
Working for Water adds Value
Later today we shall be visiting the site of a potential factory to use invasive alien biomass to make furniture. The Eco-furniture Programme is one that is particularly close to my heart, and after this public event we shall be going to the Nombulelo High School, where we shall be handing over 200 high-quality school desks made from invasive alien wood by previously unemployed workers. We hope to create jobs in Grahamstown in a factory to expand this work. We also hope to be using biomass from invasive wood and bush-encroachment species in the area to generate energy, in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation, thereby creating further jobs.
WfW and Makana are taking Control of Invading Alien Plants
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have an important announcement to make, that will affect all land-owners in the Makana Local Municipality. For about a year now, Working for Water has been going back to land-owners upon whose land we have invested public resources, to bring invasive alien plants under control.
We have spent over R37 million in Grahamstown alone, since the dawn of democracy. Invasive alien plants invade. They will grow back, sometimes worse than before, if we do not continue to follow-up the clearing work.
The National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act Regulations are expected to be signed into force by around April next year. The Department of Environmental Affairs has been running trials on the use of legislation to ensure that land-owners keep their land clear, especially where Working for Water has invested public funds. We are now satisfied that this programme can be rolled out, and we shall use the Makana Local Municipality as one of our role models.
The details of the programme will be announced in due course, but all land-owners (including the local municipality) will be required to develop plans to clear the listed invading alien plants under their control, and to keep the land clear. They will be issued directives in this regard, and a programme for the local municipality, over a reasonable period of time, will be run. The goal is to have full control of invading alien plants in the Makana Local Municipality within up to ten years.
The Working for Water programme will invest in this programme, inviting land-owners to form an association to secure part-funding to take control of invasives on their land (and thereby enhancing both the value of their land and the productive potential of the land). It will not be a “scorched earth” programme, but one that brings back the exceptional biological diversity and productivity of this beautiful part of our country.
There are emerging weeds – invasive alien species that are new to the country – where Working for Water will cover all the costs. Working for Water will also undertake all dangerous “high-altitude” clearing on cliffs and the like. Working for Water will also clear the trees that can be used in the Eco-Furniture Programme, and for biomass-to-energy. But this is the land-owners’ land, and responsibility, and we must take control. The longer it is left to fester, the greater the impact, and the greater the cost, including for the land-owner.
As I have said, we shall announce the full details in the next months, but it will be a programme that will invest tens of millions of Rands over the next ten years. If we do this strategically, as a joint partnership with land-owners, we can take back our land, our water, our productivity, our life.
Let me be clear that we are concerned about invading alien species, and not simply alien species. We do not want to spend money on controlling plants that are not a problem. Nor is it just plants.
The scientists at Rhodes University’s South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), initially through Professor Paul Skelton and his team, and now through Dr Olaf Whey, have been the bedrock of our efforts to understand the threats of invasive alien species to aquatic biodiversity, and what can be practically done to contain the threat, without compromising the economic potential of invasive species that also have commercial value, including through aquaculture. Game ranching – a cornerstone of the local economy – is also threatened, especially by invasive diseases.
Let me conclude by going back to the Working for Water programme. I want to salute all of the people involved in the programme – the Department of Environmental Affairs, the Workers, the Managers, the Implementing Agents, the Scientists and Planners, the Law Enforcement capacity, and indeed the public. This is a programme that some researchers have calculated has saved the country hundreds of billions of Rands. How fitting to celebrate this wonderful achievement, and on-going success, with Comrade Louise Asmal, as a legacy of the great visionary and initiator of Working for Water, Professor Kader Asmal.
I thank you.
