Nine years ago, Nohlale Mhlonyane watched her younger sister leave for school on an empty stomach. Mhlonyane had just finished her matric but could not find work in the tiny Eastern Cape town of Bathurst. Her mother was unemployed at the time and the situation at home was dire.
Hungry and desperate, she approached Jonathan Pryor, Eastern Cape rehabilitation project manager for the Working for Water Programme, and asked for a job. Pryor was working in the area, fighting off an invasion of alien plants, which are the single biggest threat to plant and animal biodiversity in South Africa.
Invasive alien species drink up too much water and leave very little for indigenous vegetation to survive on. This results in, among other things, soil erosion and complete drainage of the country’s streams and river systems.
Mhlonyane was given her first job replanting indigenous trees on slopes cleared of alien plants. Almost a decade later, she is working in Grahamstown, where she tends indigenous seedlings that will be planted once slopes have been cleared.
Her face caked in a sun-block made from a mixture of tree bark and water, she took a break from her physically demanding job to tell us proudly: “My sister finally finished school and got her own job and my mother is now on a disability grant. The money I make now goes towards other priorities.”
Mhlonyane (31) is now married, has a two-year-old son and says she thanks God every day for her job.
“If I did not have this job with the Working for Water people, things at home would have gotten worse,” she says. “My husband is employed but we would not be able to survive on just his salary.”
The programme was launched in 1995 to control the invading species and is a multidepartmental initiative led by the departments of water affairs and forestry, environmental affairs and tourism and agriculture. It has 300 projects nationwide and aims to enhance water security, restore the productive potential of land, promote sustainable use of natural resources and create much-needed employment in South Africa.
While Mhlonyane tends to seedlings for replanting, Pryor is in the field scouting out more land to be cleared of aliens. He wades through the thick mass of vegetation — weeds, clumps of grass and thorn bushes, and pulls out a hand-held global positioning system (GPS).
“This tool has made area calculations so much easier. Clearing out these trees is a physically and mentally demanding process as it is,” he says, “It allows me to calculate how much seed, grass plugs and pioneer plants are needed for planting and how long it will take to complete the area.”
The number of people needed to clear this dense vegetation is then calculated and labour is drawn from surrounding communities, where many are unemployed because of a lack of industry in the area.
The project is just one example of local communities working together to improve their lives through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Across the developing world ICTs are creating jobs, promoting development and spreading knowledge to marginalised and poor communities.
These tools, such as computers, cellphones and GPS help close what is popularly known as the “digital divide” — the gap between the technology haves and have-nots.
The global debate on ICTs and their potential to enhance development prompted the International Telecommunication Union to put the World Summit on the Information Society on the United Nations’s agenda in 1998.
The summit is a platform for the international community to come together, debate and agree on a common vision for the information society with the ultimate goal of bridging this digital divide. The first phase was held last year in Geneva, Switzerland.
The next phase will be held in Tunisia in November, and will see international organisations from all disciplines come together to clearly define and map out a concrete way forward, using ICTs to increase development.
Army of 20 000 fight invaders
Fighting alien invasive species has created one of South Africa’s biggest job-creation and poverty-alleviation schemes, reports Yolandi Groenewald.
The government-funded Working for Water Programme was launched in 1995 in an effort to tackle the problem of invading alien plants and unemployment. It has 300 projects nationwide and aims to enhance water security, restore the productive potential of land, promote sustainable use of natural resources and create much-needed employment in South Africa. The programme has won 33 local and international awards.
When the project started in 1995, it provided jobs to 40Â 000 previously unemployed people. It currently employs about 20Â 000 people. The programme also provides family planning, counselling and HIV education for employees as well as offering child-care and savings schemes.
A pilot project is under way to reintegrate former offenders into society by participating in the programme.
Working for Water is committed to maintain a high level of service delivery at the lowest cost.
The salary bill is less than 15% of the total budget, and the programme uses the cheapest accommodation and arranges healthy meals for less than R15 a head — and as low as R8 a head — at workshops, says Laurie Less, manager of the programme.
All Working for Water participants receive training in plant identification and management and in plotting the cutting/slashing sites using global positioning system technology. In 2003/04, the project cleared 194Â 440ha of land and more than 500km of water weeds in major river systems. It supports a world-class Biological Control programme targeting 44 invasive alien plants such as wattles, gums, pines, hakea and triffid weed.
Secondary industries have been developed through the Working for Water programme — including furniture manufacture, fuel wood, roofing, fencing and home decor products — using the materials cleared from the land. Seven such projects are operating in four provinces.