Hon Speaker, hon Ministers, hon Deputy Ministers, hon members, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen, I rise on behalf of the Portfolio Committee on Water and Environmental Affairs on this occasion to recommend to the House the passing of an international agreement in terms of section 231(2) of the Constitution of 1996. This is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project Phase II Agreement, which the governments of the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho signed in November 2011 and which the committee unanimously agreed to support. We also recommend the adoption of the committee's report on its oversight visit to the Lesotho Highlands Water Project during the October 2012 recess, which the committee also unanimously adopted.
The committee has done so for the following reasons. South Africa is an arid country with periodic droughts and a very unevenly distributed rainfall. Moreover, the availability of water is very unequal, with a considerable part of the population still without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.
The chronic shortage of water, particularly in the Gauteng area, with its large and intense industrial activity and its two metropolitan cities, already posed a major security challenge as far back as the mid-1950s, considering the fact that the densely populated Gauteng region is one of those very few industrial areas in the world not established along any natural body of water.
An active and urgent search for additional water resources therefore became primarily important with interbasin water transfers being identified as the most cost-effective solution, leading to the evolution of the comprehensive Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
It suffices to state that this project was conceptualised in the 1950s but it was only in October 1986 that the treaty was signed by South Africa's apartheid government and the Lesotho military regime, which formally established the Lesotho Highlands Water Project after the completion of a feasibility study. Thus, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project was established as a binational project spanning the borders of South Africa and Lesotho in accordance with that treaty.
This miraculous engineering feat diverts water from the Senqu River system in Lesotho to South Africa's economic hub, the water-stressed Gauteng province. The project is one of the largest and most intricate engineering construction projects in Africa. The total project was originally envisaged to transfer 70 cubic meter of water per second from the upper portions of the Lesotho Highlands to the Vaal River basin. The scheme was designed in phases, four to be precise, with each phase providing additional transfer capacity until we reached the 70 cubic meter level.
The water that is routed to South Africa through the mountains and the tunnel is put to good use also by empowering the Muela power station that generates electricity to meet the energy needs of the Lesotho people.
The first phase of the project saw the building of two dams, namely, the Katse Dam and Mohale Dam, an intake tower, transfer tunnels, a delivery tunnel and hydropower station at Muela, and a network of roads around and between this water infrastructure. Lesotho depended entirely on South Africa for its electricity requirements prior to this project.
The project has had an important impact on Lesotho's infrastructure, as hundreds of kilometres of engineered paved roads have been built in order to improve access to the different construction sites, as well as feeder roads. Today they still form a very important communication network for the villages of Lesotho.
Thus, the Kingdom of Lesotho has benefited from infrastructure development projects like dams, roads and hydropower, recruitment opportunities, and sustainable royalties of about R450 million per annum in the first phase of the project. This corresponds to 4% of Lesotho's gross domestic product, GDP, and 10% of total government revenues.
I hear I don't have the time I thought I had. So, I'll skip a few pages and go to the second phase. The second phase is now coming into operation with the signing of the agreement by the two respective governments in November 2011. The purpose of the agreement is to improve the use of the water of the Senqu/Orange River system by storing, regulating, diverting and controlling the flow of the shared water, in order to deliver specified quantities of water to South Africa.
The Phase II project entails the construction of a third dam, the Polihali Dam on the Senqu River, a transfer tunnel from Polihali to the Katse Dam and expansions to the existing Muela hydropower complex. Thus, the Kingdom of Lesotho will benefit further from all the factors that I have mentioned before, and, of course, additional royalties in regard to the water that they will produce.
It is against this background that the committee decided to visit and assess the achievements of Phase I of the project, as well as scrutinise the plans for the operationalisation of Phase II, considering the significant financial resources we have put into the project.
Accordingly, the members of the committee and staff went on an oversight visit to the project from 1 to 3 October 2012. Our observations and recommendations are contained in the committee's oversight report which was unanimously adopted and tabled in the ATCs and is recommended for adoption by the House. Let me finally say that we therefore recommend that both these reports be adopted by the House. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
There was no debate.
Question put: That the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho on Phase II of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project be approved.
Declarations of vote: