Water, Sewage & Effluent July August 2018 | Page 40

The former Minister of the Department of Water and Sanitation left a shattered department in her wake when she was reassigned to
her present Communications portfolio.
Water infra woes
With a bankrupt water department and a national budget running in deficit,
where to for water infrastructure?
By Mike Muller
I
t used to be easy to raise money to build big water projects
in South Africa. So, the Katse and Mohale dams in Lesotho,
which keep water running from Gauteng’s taps, were funded
by loans from local and international banks. The huge VRESAP
pipeline, which takes water from the Vaal Dam to make sure
that Sasol in Secunda and Eskom’s Mpumalanga power
stations do not run dry, were funded in the same way. So too
were a range of smaller projects, including Cape Town’s Berg
River Dam (completed in 2009), which saved the city from its
Day Zero; the Mooi-Mgeni transfer, which keeps Durban and
surrounds water-secure; and the Mokolo pipeline, which will
enable Medupi Power Station to keep the lights on (when it is
finally fully commissioned).
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Water Sewage & Effluent July/August 2018
This flow of funds is now under threat as a result of the
shenanigans in the National Department of Water and
Sanitation (DWS). South Africans have grown accustomed
to allegations that government administration is corrupt and
incompetent. While often the problems are exaggerated, that
is not the case with DWS.
When the Auditor-General of the country reports to
Parliament that the DWS has the worst record of fruitless
and wasteful expenditure of any department, you have to
take him seriously. He was backed in Parliament by the
chairman of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts,
who said that criminal charges should be brought against
former Minister Mokonyane under whom the Department
had completely collapsed.