Hon Speaker, in what is a first for South Africa, hectares of privately owned farmland were declared a protected environment earlier this month. The KwaMandlangampisi Protected Environment, which extends from Wakkerstroom to Luneburg in Mpumalanga, encompasses high- altitude grasslands, wetlands and indigenous forests, and is home to numerous threatened endemic plant, bird and animal species.
This catchment area, inclusive of the headwaters of the Pongola and Assegai Rivers, is critical in terms of its national power generation. In this regard, the IFP calls on the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs to protect and conserve these kinds of environments, and to spread through this initiative to the rest of South Africa the need for conservation and the protection of our precious future water supplies. I thank you. [Applause.]