Fiona Macleod
Ronnie Kasrils, former Umkhonto weSizwe head of military intelligence and democratic South Africa’s first deputy defence minister, gets to be the demolition man again when he blows a giant concrete overflow tower to smithereens.
In his present role as Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Kasrils is planning to push the button that will detonate the overflow tower – nicknamed “morning glory” – of the Zoeknog Dam in Mpumalanga. He will be blowing up not only a useless and potentially dangerous concrete monolith, but a testament to apartheid engineering that fell flat on its face.
The Zoeknog Dam was built in the late 1980s on the Mutlumuvi River, one of the main tributaries feeding the Sand River, which flows out of the foothills of Mpumalanga’s Drakensberg mountain range.
The main goal of the dam was to provide irrigation for citrus, rice and coffee farmers who were employing labourers from the Gazankulu and Lebowa homelands. Unemployment in these apartheid dumping grounds was close to 70% and, with about 100 people per square kilometre, the population density was closer to that of a country like Belgium than rural South Africa.
The “morning glory”overflow tower was fted by engineers for its structural design, and the “1992” imprinted close to the top of the tower marked the date when it was expected to be launched.
But in late 1991, before the politicians could cut the ribbons and when the dam was only 30% full, water broke through the dam walls. Only the intuition of an elderly herdsman, who had stayed awake all night and alerted his neighbours when he heard the water rumbling at 5.30am, saved the lives of the people living downstream.
Now the “morning glory” needs to be imploded because it has structural faults and is potentially dangerous, says Working for Water’s regional programme co-ordinator Tony Poulter.
“We’re not sure exactly when the minister will blow it up, but he wants to use the opportunity as a training exercise for the military. We have to make sure it doesn’t fall into the river,” says Poulter.
Teams of workers employed by Working for Water, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s alien plant-clearing programme, have been removing invading alien vegetation from the banks of the Sand River’s tributaries since 1997.
The teams are part of a pioneering river catchment management plan called Save the Sand. Under the umbrella of the Department of Agriculture’s Land Care programme, Save the Sand has drawn together six national government departments, the Mpumalanga and Northern Province provincial governments, communities, NGOs, foresters, conservationists and private landowners.
The aim is to get the river flowing again – agriculture and bad forestry practices have reduced it from an annual to a seasonal river -and to reduce the sedimentation caused by erosion in the catchment areas and along the river banks.
The Sand River feeds into the Sabie River in the Kruger National Park, and eventually makes its way to the ocean in Mozambique. Experts say sedimentation exacerbated the recent floods by making the water flow faster. Sedimentation is the biggest killer of fish and other life forms in the river and it reduces the quality of the water for human consumption.
On all sides of the “morning glory”, the erosion caused by the disaster that was the Zoeknog Dam is monumental. Save the Sand’s ambition is to get rid of the erosion, on a scale never seen before in this country.
In the past year 5ha have been treated, and the treatment held during the February flooding. The area has been levelled off into terraces, which have been planted with grass and other vegetation.
Land Care has dedicated between R4- million and R5-million to treating the remaining 25ha of erosion around the dam in the coming years. The Department of Agriculture announced last week that its 1999/2000 budget includes R20-million for various natural resources management projects around the country.
“We’ve planted various crops, grasses and trees, so the communities who live here can decide what land use they prefer,” says Sharon Pollard of the Association for Water and Rural Development, an NGO that has been working with Land Care on the erosion treatment at Zoeknog Dam.
“Some residents want to use the treated area for grazing, some for medicinal plants, others for food crops. It’s clear that the old citrus, rice and coffee plantations don’t work here.”
Pollard and her team have been working closely with three communities of about 15 000 people living near the dam. She emphasises that unless the communities understand and co-operate in the erosion control, the best technical treatments in the world will fail.
This is the difference between the Zoeknog Dam of the past and the future. When Kasrils pushes the button on the “morning glory”, these communities will be the first on his guest list for the party.