A Giant Economic Baby Is in the Have Altered Watersheds That Account for Process of Being Born.” Over 40 Percent of the Country’S Total M.M

Pipe Dreams

The World Bank’s Failed Efforts to Restore Lives and Livelihoods of Dam-Affected People in Lesotho

By Ryan Hoover

Published 2001

Map of Lesotho

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

A Lesotho Snapshot 3

Setting the Stage 5

The Damage Done 7

Scattered by the Dam: LHWP Resettlement 17

Replacing What Was Lost: The Compensation Plan 25

Back to the Drawing Board: Experiments in Rural Development 34

Selling the Dream: The Community Participation Strategy 48

Conclusion 54

About IRN 59

Introduction

“A giant economic baby is in the have altered watersheds that account for process of being born.” over 40 percent of the country’s total M.M. Lebotsa, Minister of Lesotho Highlands area. Water and Energy Affairs Not only is Lesotho a small country, it is The Lesotho Highlands Water Project also one of the world’s poorest. Lesotho (LHWP) is the most massive infra- is landlocked and totally enveloped by structure project ever constructed on the its large, economically powerful African continent. It involves six large neighbor, South Africa. Its geographic dams, which, if completed, will transfer position, combined with the relative the equivalent of one swimming pool dearth of natural resources within its full of water every second (over 70 cubic borders and its long history as a South meters) to South Africa’s industrial African labor reserve, make Lesotho center, Gauteng Province, and supply almost completely economically 72MW of hydroelectricity to Lesotho. dependent on South Africa. The country Katse Dam, the first dam to be com- has one of the ten highest income pleted in the scheme, is the tallest dam in disparities in the world, which means the Africa at 186 meters – the size of a 52- majority of its 2.1 million citizens story building. The second completed (called Basotho) subsist on far less than dam, Muela, is 55 meters high, and is the the GNP per capita of $550 per year. In only hydropower dam in the scheme. 1993, the wealthiest 10 percent of Currently, construction is well underway Basotho households enjoyed 44 percent on Mohale Dam, which will be a of the national income whereas the looming 146 meters. The project also poorest 40 percent of households sur- involves 260 kilometers of water vived on just 8 percent of the national delivery tunnels; hundreds of kilometers income.1 Basotho mineworkers have in of access roads and bridges, electricity recent years been laid off from South transmission lines, and large base camps African mines in droves, adding to for the thousands of laborers and foreign already staggering unemployment rates, contractors working at the construction and the HIV/AIDS epidemic is driving sites. Companies from at least nine down the 55-year average life different nations are involved in the expectancy. project’s construction. The World Bank and numerous other financial institutions Placed in this context, the economic from three different continents provided impact of the multi-billion dollar LHWP the more than US$4 billion worth of is profound. In 1998, it accounted for financing that the LHWP has already 13.6 percent of the value of Lesotho’s required. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over one third of all construction in the Ironically, this enormous project is being country is LHWP-related. Royalties built in one of Africa’s smallest from the project make up 27.8 percent of countries. Lesotho is approximately the all Government revenue.2 Some 4,000 size of Belgium, and the project’s dams Basotho got temporary jobs at the Katse

1 Introduction

Dam construction site and hundreds successful resettlement requires more flocked to the area to service the sufficient political will, institutional workers as food vendors, shopkeepers, capacity, and funding. All three of these and prostitutes. A thousand more local elements are present in the LHWP people will work at Mohale Dam. The scenario, but the restoration of World Bank uses statistics like these to livelihoods is undeniably far from being argue that the LHWP “provides the only achieved. In fact, the World Bank itself source of development for Lesotho.”3 even admitted that, “The results on the social side…are clearly distressing. While the project has increased the Despite the fact that LHWP was fortunes of the nation’s elite, the prepared with professionals covering majority of Basotho were not able to socio-economic and environmental cash in on the LHWP. Katse and Muela issues which resulted in a high quality alone dispossessed nearly 20,000 people environmental action plan, despite of land and resources, while Mohale will professional advisers and close similarly affect approximately 7,000 supervisions over the years, the more while displacing hundreds of production of resettlement plans and the households. In total, approximately 1.5 satisfactory implementation of percent of Lesotho’s citizenry is directly compensation and rural development affected by the project. It weakened programs have been dangerously local economies and severely strained delayed.”5 The experience of the LHWP the social fabric of nearby villages. suggests that “best practice” may look Despite a long-term compensation good on paper, but is insufficient to program, huge amounts of resources prevent and offset significant harm to devoted to “rural development”, and affected communities. many good intentions, the welfare of affected people has been compromised – 1 World Bank, Lesotho Poverty Assessment, 1995, pp. iv-ix, 9. perhaps irrevocably. 2 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty & Livelihoods in Lesotho, 1999, April 2000, p. 40. Have the millions of dollars invested in 3 World Bank, “Lesotho Highlands Water Project to Benefit Lesotho, South Africa,” World Bank News, compensation and development June 4, 1998, p. 3. programs lent credence to proponents’ 4 Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority, Lesotho Highlands claims that the LHWP is global “best Water Project, Vol. 5, May 2000, p. 2. 5 World Bank, LHWP Back to Office Report, April 4, practice” and “Africa’s biggest ongoing 1994, p. 4. success story,”4 or is the scale of the impact so great that Highlands communities will never fully recover? This paper focuses on the current situation of the people who sacrificed so much to allow this “giant economic baby” to be born and describes the outcome of the efforts taken to prevent them from becoming victims of “development.”

Expert opinion concerning large-scale resettlement projects posits that

A Lesotho Snapshot

A walk through the streets of Lesotho’s ecosystems that, until the LHWP, were capital, Maseru, reveals the extent to virtually roadless. The mountains are which the Lesotho Highlands Water home to the threatened spiral aloe and Project has become embedded in the scores of wildflower species. The daily life of Basotho. Scores of Toyota endangered bearded vulture and a 4x4s ply the crowded streets, bearing the variety of other bird species roost in the logo of the Lesotho Highlands steep gorges. Overhanging rock faces Development Authority (LHDA), the and caves shelter centuries-old San wall parastatal charged with constructing the paintings. project. Bumper stickers proclaiming, “The Big Turn On! Lesotho Delivers Herds of cattle, sheep, and goats graze Water To South Africa, 22 January high up on the slopes under the mostly 1998” adorn many private vehicles. watchful gaze of young herdboys Maseru professionals tote LHDA day wrapped in wool blankets and shod in planners. LHDA occupies space in the oversized gumboots. The large numbers Lesotho Bank building, the post office, of animals have taken their toll on the the Maseru Sun Hotel, and the Victoria steep, communally grazed mountain Hotel. Basotho discuss the LHWP on the sides. The brittle soil no longer supports radio, debate it in the schools, and healthy grasslands. Sheet erosion examine it in the courts. The LHDA exposes the Maloti’s basalt bedrock public relations machine even extends while woody, unpalatable weeds are into isolated Highlands communities. rapidly choking out all their competitors LHDA calendars full of glossy pictures in the remaining patches of soil.1 of the project can be found in houses in the most remote villages. Men wearing Trees are notable for their absence in “Highlands Water Venture” overalls and these mountains. Many families manage orange hard hats (obtained during stints to establish a few peach trees, but for the of work at Katse Dam) plough the fields most part, trees grow only in riparian behind teams of straining oxen, and the areas. The willows and poplar thickets ubiquitous white LHDA Toyotas zoom growing along streambeds are an along unpaved mountain roads. important source of fuel and building materials for highland households, and Lesotho’s fledgling tourist industry often are carefully maintained for ongoing touts the Maloti Mountains as the “Roof harvests. of Africa.” The rugged mountain range covers three quarters of the country and In the mountain valleys, farmers sow includes some peaks that reach higher maize, the staple crop, in terraced fields than 3,300 meters. Temperatures in the of relatively rich loam. However, even Highlands frequently dip below zero here, farmers report steadily declining degrees Celsius during the harsh winter yields. The over-exploited land is losing nights. In addition to being home to tens its fertility.2 The region’s erratic rain of thousands of rural farmers and patterns compound the problem. Maize herders, this range supports fragile crops need regular doses of water

3 A Lesotho Snapshot throughout their growth period, but are old, sick, disabled, and/or unem- rainfall in Lesotho rarely cooperates ployed. The remnants have been with this requirement. When the rain described as “a great mass of depend- comes, it often falls in heavy, hail-laced ants, seeking to eke out a living through downpours that can sometimes be more some combination of mining remit- damaging to the soil and crops than no tances, farming, beer brewing, and rain at all. selling minor goods and services to those privileged ones with direct or indirect Villages are relatively small, consisting access to wage labor.”7 of perhaps 25 family compounds. Each compound includes at least one In this bleak setting, the Governments of rondavel, a circular stone house with a South Africa and Lesotho constructed thatched roof and a door facing east in one of the most sophisticated – and order to catch the light of the morning expensive – water supply systems on the sun. All of the buildings are surrounded continent. by spaces of compacted bare earth that provides for the easy detection of 1 Sechaba Consultants, Lesotho’s Long Journey: Hard Choices at the Crossroads, 1995, p. 44. intruding snakes. Stone cattle kraals 2 Ibid. holding cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats 3 Robert Archer, Trust in Construction? The Lesotho are situated nearby, close to gardens full Highlands Water Project, Christian Aid, 1995, p. 4. 4 Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the of cabbage, maize and onions. A Lesotho Highlands Water Project Phase 1A Area: network of paths binds the village 1999 Monitoring Report, January 2000, p. 2. together, showing the centers of activity: 5 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in Lesotho, 2000, June 2000, p. 81. the spring, the shop, the church, the 6 LHDA, Resettlement & Development Study: A chief’s residence. Synopsis of Studies and Proposed Programmes, April 1997, p. 5. 7 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: These villagers are very poor. As of “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic 1993, nearly 80 percent of villagers Power in Lesotho, University of Minnesota Press, living in LHWP project areas survived 1994, p. 126. on less than $15 per month. Most of them lived on far less.3 Almost one third of villagers in the project area do not have a basic education.4 Only 20 percent of adults have wage work.5 Approx- imately 5-10 percent of mountain households have members who work in mines or on farms in South Africa. While this appears to be a relatively insignificant figure, the wages earned by these fortunate few account for 26% of all village income.6 This is a greater proportion of income than that from any other source, including the sale of crops and livestock. Because the young and talented tend to seek work across the border, those left behind in the villages

Setting the Stage

“Our people thirst for progress. Our land thirsts for water.” Pik Botha, South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the signing of the LHWP treaty

General Metsing Lekhanya is an imposing figure. Often photographed in his military fatigues and a green beret, the man exudes confidence verging on braggadocio. His intimidating presence stems not only from his physical Katse Dam under construction appearance and incendiary political speeches, but also from allegations that rainfall and recommended that it exploit he once confronted a student he believed this natural resource in exchange for to be having an affair with his girlfriend valuable foreign currency. South Africa and shot him to death. The High Court had spent much of the intervening period of Lesotho later acquitted him on trying to negotiate an agreement, but grounds of “justifiable homicide.”1 problems with financing and Jonathan’s growing intransigence had stymied any On January 20, 1986, he and his deal. Before Lekhanya deposed him, paramilitary soldiers toppled the Jonathan had been insisting that Lesotho should be able to regulate the amount of government of Leabua Jonathan in a 2 coup after a South African blockade water flowing to South Africa. This crippled Lesotho’s economy. demand was unacceptable to strategists Immediately following the coup, South in Pretoria. Now with Lekhanya’s pliant Africa lifted the blockade. Lekhanya’s military council in power, the demand opponents labeled him a puppet of the was dropped, and Botha was set to sign apartheid regime. He ignored their his name on the treaty that would help criticism, consolidated his power and, slake his nation’s thirst. shortly thereafter, agreed to allow South Africa to build the LHWP. One wonders if either Botha or Lekhanya, as they scrutinized the text of Pik Botha, the South African Minister of the LHWP Treaty, paused at Article Foreign Affairs, traveled to Maseru on 7(18) and pondered its feasibility. The October 24, 1986 to seal the deal that section states that the project will would reverse the flow of the “ensure that members of local Senqu/Orange River from the Lesotho communities in the Kingdom of Lesotho, Highlands to the booming, thirsty who will be affected by flooding, Transvaal (now Gauteng) Province. The construction works, or other similar project had been conceived nearly 30 Project related causes, will be enabled to years earlier when British economists maintain a standard of living not inferior noted Lesotho’s high average annual to that obtaining at the time of first

5 Setting the Stage disturbance.”3 The Legal Order which created the LHDA in 1986 reiterated the 2 Kate Showers, Colonial and Post-Apartheid Water Projects in Southern Africa: Political Agendas and commitment, stating, “the authority shall Environmental Consequences, Boston University, ensure that as far as is reasonably 1998, p. 17. possible, the standard of living and 3 Treaty on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, October 1986, p. 27. income of persons displaced by the 4 Government of Lesotho, Lesotho Highlands construction of an approved scheme Development Authority Order, Maseru, November 1986, No. 23, p. 429. shall not be reduced from the standard of 5 living and the income existing prior to Kader Asmal, Speech to GEM Workshop on Lesotho 4 Highlands Water Project, August 28, 1996. the displacement of such persons.” In 6 World Bank, Operational Directive 4.30: 1996, Kader Asmal, then the South Involuntary Resettlement, June 1990, p. 1. African Minister of Water Affairs, upped the ante by guaranteeing that all affected people will be left “better off” as a result of the project.5

The LHWP’s principal funders also required that the project benefit affected populations. World Bank policy dictates “all involuntary resettlement should be conceived and executed as development programs, with resettlers… assisted in their efforts to improve their former living standards, income earning capacity, and production levels, or at least to restore them.”6 The World Bank’s stance is critical, because, although it contributes a relatively small percentage of the overall costs of the project, its support of the project attracts other investors and its policies are the project standard.

The commitments made to LHWP- affected people promise little more than the minimal obligations of human decency, but the worldwide record on fulfilling these obligations to the dam- affected is one of failure and back- pedaling. Thus far, the Lesotho case is no exception. Instead of improving the lives of affected people, the project has left many of them destitute.

1 Colleen Lowe Morna, “The King is Couped,” Africa Report, January-February 1991, p. 59.

The Damage Done

“There is nothing worse than working for food.5 Furthermore, the inundated hard at something and then having land tends to be the best land. The something come and destroy it. We alluvial soils in the mountain valleys are were satisfied with the way we were richer and deeper, producing higher working. We were sowing maize and yields. They are also usually located close to the villages, thus giving them a beans. We were eating fresh maize. high convenience value to highland We had trees. We had firewood, and farmers who must depend almost people were buying it from us. We entirely on human and animal traction. were getting money, and we were able Another project-related threat to the to go to school. When LHDA came precious remaining arable land comes and destroyed everything that was from poor drainage systems along important to my family, we started to LHWP roads. The runoff from these become poor. The dam took our culverts creates ever-widening gullies fields and our trees. That was the end that have, in some cases, forced farmers of our money. We needed to look to plough against the contour of the hard to find enough money for us to hillside, accelerating erosion even attend school… Now, when I look at further. Side-spoil, left over from road the dam, I still get very angry.1” construction, has ruined other fields, because the large rocks are too large to Mpho, Sepinare Primary School, Standard 7 move and too numerous to plough Lost Resources around. A major impediment to restoring the livelihoods of affected people is the Katse, Muela, and Mohale dams decreased the highlands’ pasturelands by enormous impact of reservoir inundation 6 and dam construction on the quantity a combined 5,000 hectares. Herds of and quality of natural resources in the cattle, sheep, and goats are now area. concentrated on a significantly smaller range, straining already over-stressed The project’s first two dams, Katse and grazing land. The deterioration of the Muela, took approximately 1,900 range has been quite rapid, with almost hectares of cropland out of use (a 90 percent of affected people reporting significant amount in a small country worsening conditions every year since 7 where only 8 percent of land is arable).2 the reservoirs filled. Many villages at Approximately 2,345 households owned Katse note that large numbers of 8 fields in the submerged area, while many livestock have starved as a result. The more sharecropped in it.3 Mohale Dam reservoirs also flooded ravines and will take a further 1,000 hectares, valleys that formerly not only held the affecting another 1,000 households.4 The most palatable grasses, but also sheltered loss of this much land causes a severe young livestock from the Maloti winter’s strain on local food security because icy winds. These winter pastures are two-thirds of the people living in project extremely scarce in Lesotho, and their areas depend on locally produced crops

7 The Damage Done loss makes cattle-rearing considerably valley to provide a valuable nutritional more difficult. In some areas at Katse supplement to their maize-based diet. Dam, the scarcity of grazing “has People must now travel much further to created conflict and running battles compensate for the loss, or else eat fewer 9 between herders.” vegetables. The advantage of vegetables from the riparian zone is that they ripen Other communal assets were also earlier and in some cases can be severely affected (see chart below). harvested in winter. Resources Harvested From Senqu Riparian Zones10 Percent of Average Amount Market Annual Cost Households Collected Value per of Resource That Harvested Annually per Unit Loss per Resource Household Household Willow Trees 22.7% 5.5 trees $4.82 $26.51 Poplar Trees 22.7% 14.6 trees $2.68 $39.13 Woody shrubs 47% 190 bundles $1.12 $212.80 Wild vegetables 43.1% 148 bags $0.35 $51.80 Medicinal plants 19.8% N/A N/A $8.02 Thatch grass 24.7% 6.5 bundles $1.22 $7.93 Craft grass (leloli) 17.0% 4.2 bundles $2.02 $8.48 River sand 9.2% N/A N/A $63.98 Average Annual Cost of Total Resource Loss per Household $146.00

Scarce fuel sources, both trees and Over 175 species of medicinal plants woody shrubs, were lost to inundation, grew in the flooded areas.12 Local causing economic hardship to affected herbalists used them to treat everything families. Many households sold from toothaches to digestive problems, firewood to supplement family income. and many were sold to traditional Because very few trees grow outside of doctors in the lowlands. Traditional inundation zones, affected people had to doctors especially valued the herbs that locate building material outside of grew close to the river because they are LHWP areas and forgo important thought to be more powerful medicine fuelwood sales. People must also now than herbs growing higher up the slopes. walk significant distances to gather Some species disappeared from the area heavy bundles of shrubs for cooking completely, or else became so scarce fires. Almost half of all households that it was no longer worth the effort to gathered shrubs and debris from riparian hunt for them. Almost 40 percent of areas. With the submergence of the dam-affected people reported that they riparian zone, almost half the population were using fewer medicinal plants since must now locate over $200 worth of the construction of Katse, while 10 brushwood elsewhere, or else substitute percent have stopped using them expensive alternative fuels.11 altogether.13 The loss of these plants also had cultural implications, because, in Almost half of affected households Basotho tradition, each plant and animal gathered wild vegetables from the river has “properties or powers associated

8 The Damage Done with it, and … could be used for … much as 45 percent of annual household bringing good fortune or increased income.17 The majority of the lost power to its possessor.”14 resources were gathered at little or no The reservoir flooded areas where cost from communal lands. Replacement highlands residents once gathered of the now scarce goods, however, thatching grass to roof their houses. necessitates increased economic cost, With the loss of this resource, people increased physical effort, and/or either had to buy thatching grass from substitution of inferior goods. sellers in the lowlands or else roof their Unfortunately, an increasingly common houses with poorer quality grass that choice is to stop using the resource would leak even during light rains. An entirely rather than spend the increasing number of people now must household’s precious little income on also buy other construction materials previously free goods. like poles and posts, while almost one- third of the population, unable to afford Construction impacts the expense, has been forced to make do Construction activity associated with the with less wood altogether.15 dams caused additional impacts. Springs dried up because of blasting, tunneling, Artisans in the affected region lost and road construction. This forced many access to leloli grass, which was used in villagers to either travel long distances to various traditional crafts. Few people in collect water, or else collect water from the area continue to produce leloli-based less sanitary sources. LHDA dissuaded crafts, because the market value per villagers from using water from the bundle is now prohibitively expensive. reservoirs, explaining that it may make them ill.18 Some villagers reported that River sand was another resource that they had been told that accessing became scarce after the reservoir filled. reservoir water was illegal because it In the affected areas, it is primarily used was South African property.19 to make bricks, and affected a number of construction entrepreneurs in the project Before the reservoirs filled, affected areas. people frequently traveled across the river valleys to shop, to visit friends and If figures gathered in the downstream relatives, to receive medical attention, socio-economic survey are held to be and to attend school. Many affected representative of pre-reservoir resource people crossed the Bokong and Maliba- use, each household within a 5 km matso rivers at least once a week. Katse corridor of Katse was gathering an reservoir inundated seventy-eight of average of $146 worth of renewable these crossings.20 LHDA constructed resources from the submerged zone four bridges to mitigate this disruption annually (see chart, p. 8).16 This figure and, for several years, operated a small excludes the economic value of crop and ferryboat service. Unfortunately, the grazing land. According to recent data, ferry service has been discontinued the income of the majority of mountain because it was too “costly,”21 isolating households is less than $320 per year, hundreds of villagers between the meaning that the replacement cost of reservoir branches and forcing many these resources alone could represent as other villagers to pay significant fees for

9 The Damage Done auto transport from one side of the dam affected houses in an attempt to to the other. reinforce them.

Dam Safety Downstream Impacts The dams also presented safety hazards. Approximately 150,000 more people are A number of people drowned in the affected by reduced river flows down- months following the inundation of stream of LHWP dams. These impacts Katse reservoir. A few livestock also were not officially recognized until an died in the reservoir,22 but livestock Instream Flow Requirement (IFR) study losses are more common downstream intended to predict long-term effects of when periodic floodgate tests send reduced river flows described them in surges of water downstream. Other November 1999, long after the project safety concerns stem from LHWP con- began.27 The report, heralded by experts tractors’ failure to rehabilitate stone as being one of the most comprehensive quarries and road cuts, posing a danger ever undertaken, warns that continuing to nearby people and livestock. Staff of with the project as proposed will reduce local NGOs have documented at least Lesotho’s river systems to “something three cases of affected people drowning akin to waste-water drains.” It recom- in flooded quarries and construction site mends millions of dollars in compensa- pits.23 tion and mitigation measures for downstream communities – costs that may Reservoir-induced seismicity caused one mean LHWP water is not as cheap as of the most remarkable threats to public originally thought. Nevertheless, at the safety. Villagers living along the Maliba- time this paper was completed, the IFR matso branch of Katse reservoir experi- had still not been publicly released. enced tremors of a magnitude of 3.1 on Negotiations between Lesotho and South the Richter scale in 1996 soon after the Africa on future LHWP dams continued reservoir filled. The quakes damaged in the meantime. more than 50 houses and left 11 more in serious structural jeopardy.24 They also The downstream impacts are already left a 1.5km-long crack through the “severe.”28 Pests are on the increase. village of Mapeleng. LHDA-hired Among them are the blackfly, a cattle seismologists believe that there is little pest, and a poultry parasite. Water danger of the land below the crack flowing in the reaches below Katse Dam falling into the reservoir, but seismic is now too contaminated to drink, and activity may persist and it is thought to local communities complain that it be a significant possibility when Mohale causes skin rashes after they cross or reservoir fills.25 In the event of further swim in the river.29 The low flows also seismicity, experts believe that “injury or lead to higher algae levels in the river, loss of life cannot be excluded” because which in turn create suitable conditions traditionally constructed rondavels will for disease-carrying liver fluke snails. be damaged by even the smallest of Liver fluke disease affects livestock, tremors.26 LHDA resettled many of the resulting in reduced appetite and death. affected households at Mapeleng and Moreover, most local people will not eat smeared cement on the outside of other meat from animals affected by the disease, greatly reducing protein in the

10 The Damage Done local diet. Local people’s diet is also Every morning men would gather affected by the reduction of certain wild outside the gates of the construction vegetables that depend on higher river sites, hoping for work. Many had flows, and through declines in fish previously worked in South African gold stocks that are an important protein and coal mines and donned their old source in certain villages. hardhats and overalls to demonstrate that they were no strangers to hard labor. Social Impacts Almost 4000 of these itinerant laborers In addition to the natural resource losses were hired to work at Katse Dam. They caused by the waters rising behind moved into large, prefabricated LHWP’s dams, the project brought a dormitories adjacent to the new number of social traumas to people shantytowns. The unlucky ones, many living in the region. Systems of authority without enough money to finance a trip were marginalized; family relationships back home, continued to lounge outside were strained to the breaking point; the project gates, playing dice games and belief systems were trivialized, and hoping to land a “piece-job,” a short stint communities’ sense of security was of manual labor. threatened. These disturbances could not be easily compensated. Their impacts The presence of the workers caused were so far-reaching and had so many severe social impacts in the villages they (frequently intangible) related effects descended upon. Families broke up that any attempts to mitigate them are all when men from the labor camps initiated but futile. affairs and often set up housekeeping with the wives of local unemployed men The huge influx of construction workers who could not provide steady cash. and job seekers was a large part of this Ordinarily, village leaders would have social disruption. Hearing that jobs were dealt with any matters of sexual behavior to be had, thousands of men from that proved destructive to community Lesotho’s lowlands and other parts of relationships. The project workers the mountains converged on the however were not subject to the previously isolated villages near LHWP authority of local chiefs, and thus, acted construction sites. Some rented rooms as they pleased. Christian Aid’s Robert from the villagers, but the majority Archer warned, “if the Chiefs and bribed local chiefs to allow them to build village leaders cannot modify behavior small shanties on the village outskirts. that is seen by their communities to be The shanties soon outnumbered the destructive and damaging, they will lose homes of the original residents in the authority they have over their own villages nearest the construction sites. people.”32 His prediction began to come Ha Mensel village’s 87 households true. Elders and village leaders hosted, on average, four outsiders each.30 complained of the insubordination and Shop owners used the boom to raise lack of respect shown to them by young prices on essential goods, making it all people, and anecdotal evidence at Katse the more difficult for local people to suggests that incidents of crime purchase household items.31 involving youth (particularly theft) increased significantly. Local police noted that theft in general increased

11 The Damage Done markedly.33 One man at Mohale empty cans out of its own backyard, how lamented, “the chieftainship is not will it ever be capable of looking after respected at all, things are being decided one of the world’s largest water freely.”34 projects?”38

While access to health services was Meanwhile, three kilometers away, improved, the project significantly engineers and construction supervisors increased the risk of sexually transmitted from South Africa, the UK, Germany, diseases. According to an August 7, France, and Italy moved into the gated 1995 report in Archives of Internal community of Katse Village. The village Medicine, “In the early years of the very much resembles a Los Angeles worldwide pandemic, there were no suburb with its tidy bungalows, street reported cases of AIDS in Lesotho.” lamps, carports, satellite TVs, swimming That all changed when HIV-infected pools, tennis courts, restaurants, construction workers arrived in the lawnmowers and security guards. Every previously isolated LHWP areas. By evening young Basotho girls in lipstick 1992, HIV infection rates in villages and short skirts would linger outside the around the dam were 0.5 percent, and gates of the village, hoping to attract the infection rates in the dams’ work camps attention of Europeans on their way were over 20 times higher (5.3%).35 The home from work. The involvement of town of Leribe, which is a sort of children with LHWP workers was a gateway to LHWP project areas, had a serious one. Many girls needed to walk low HIV infection rate in the early past construction camps on their way to stages of project construction. By 1993, and from school, easy targets for the it had the highest rate in the country. The wage-earning workers. rate among Leribe’s 15-24 year olds skyrocketed from 3 percent in 1991 to Children were some of the most 12.6 percent in 1993.36 By the year 1999, perceptive observers of the changes that tests of antenatal women living in the occurred in local families. A 12-year-old mountains around Katse Dam indicated girl living near Katse Dam wrote the 22 percent of them were HIV positive.37 following: “Our sisters are out of control. They are Shebeens (bars) sprang up throughout pregnant. My mother left my father the area, supplying workers with a alone and stayed at Katse with another steady source of joala, Lesotho’s man. My father went to Katse Lodge, sorghum brew. Alcohol fueled the and he did not give us any money. He animosity between the newcomers and married and stayed there. We lived a the local villagers, and violent fights difficult life after that. My mother came became commonplace. Empty beer cans to see us and went back. Even today, the littered the once quiet villages and LHWP is still bad. Our brothers are plastic bags were strewn throughout drinking beer and making young ladies roadside fields. The trash problem pregnant, and other girls sleep where became so bad that it prompted the their parents don’t know. Girls are World Bank’s Panel of Experts to falling in love with men. Women are exasperatedly wonder, “If the (LHDA) falling in love with boys. Girls are Environment Division can’t get the killing their babies. They throw them in

12 The Damage Done tins and in toilets. The LHWP is bad LHWP areas. However, some observers because girls were drinking beer and believe that rising theft rates are more an they were going in cars of the foreign indicator of rising poverty levels than engineers and contractors; especially my improved access, as there are an sister.”39 increasing number of desperate people willing to join stock theft gangs.42 These In sum, the labor influx brought nearby gangs, more accurately described as communities to a virtual social collapse. syndicates, involve politicians, LHDA itself admitted that, “It is butcheries, police, and local chiefs. apparent that the impact of the Phase 1A Armed with AK-47s and other weapons, construction workforce on local the thieves attack the remote cattle posts communities has been much greater than at night, killing the young herdboys they was originally anticipated. While many find there if they fail to flee quickly of the economic benefits have not enough. They drive the cattle to materialized, most of the social rendezvous points where they are taken disbenefits have, leaving the social to be slaughtered or sold outside the fabric of these communities visibly country. Members of the gangs reside in disintegrating. It is common cause nearly every village, and are well known among the Phase 1A construction to the village’s other residents. Their communities that Government’s main presence is tolerated because of a fear of interest lies in its agreement with South reprisals. In addition to shattering the Africa and that its commitment to local communities’ sense of security, one of people has been forgotten.”40 the effects of increasing stock theft has been that livestock owners now keep The Ups and Downs of Roads their cattle closer to the village in an The LHWP’s access roads were both a effort to protect them. This compounds boon and a bane to affected people. the range degradation problem. A more Before the roads, a trip to the lowlands obvious effect of stock theft is a to purchase supplies for shops, attend decrease in economic security: livestock funerals, or visit family necessitated a is an important safeguard “against difficult two-day journey on horseback. sudden adverse changes in the After their completion, affected people household’s financial situation.”43 could travel to Maseru by taxi or bus early in the morning and return home on Culture Clash the same day. The access to goods and Affected people’s belief systems and services made life easier in many cultural practices were also impacted respects, but as will be explained in the significantly by the construction of the section on development, it hindered local dams. Project-affected people know development. Moikobane Mapanya as a rainmaker. In the years before the LHWP, he would Stock theft, already a problem, became receive visions, which commanded him rampant. Almost 30 percent of mountain to pray for rain on the banks of the households have lost animals to theft in Malibamatso River, close to the site of 2000, and 5 percent were left with no Katse Dam. After an intricate ceremony livestock at all.41 Project roads certainly that attracted residents of many area allowed thieves easier access to the villages, he would call for rain.

13 The Damage Done

Participants in the ceremonies claim that Other spiritual leaders have also suffered more often than not, rain would fall serious losses to the project. The Zionist within the next 24 hours. The reservoir congregation in Ha Theko, led by Daniel destroyed all of the sacred places where Khoaile, lost their baptismal sites in the Mapanya prayed for rain, and a project Malibamatso River when LHDA access road ruined the spring from which impounded Katse Dam. “By tradition, I he collected water for use in healing always baptized my people inside this ceremonies. Mapanya no longer receives river,” said Khoaile, “LHDA should visions, and he has given up praying for identify an alternative place where I rain. “This dam has brought us nothing shall baptize people without fear of but trouble,” he said. “It is changing us drowning.”45 in ways that are difficult to see. Now we have all of this crime and fighting in our The reservoir inundated culturally villages.”44 significant objects. Before the dam, the people of Ha Tsepo believed that a

LHWP and Gender Women in the affected areas, who already endured severe gender inequalities before the LHWP, bore the brunt of its social impacts. Typically, men’s roles relate primarily to agriculture: plowing, planting, and harvesting. They are involved in politics and dominate decision-making at the village and household level. They also normally control all financial matters. Women, on the other hand, are responsible for the welfare of the family. They cook, care for children and the elderly, collect water, tend gardens, gather fuel, and search for wild vegetables for the household. LHWP dams added to women’s already considerable workload, and made it even more taxing and time-consuming. First, because the reservoirs flooded springs and many areas where women would collect fuel and food, they were forced to travel greater distances to find these resources. In order to justify the long journey, they would gather larger loads, making the task that much more difficult. Second, when local men took on full-time employment at the dams’ construction sites (and only men were hired) most of their chores had to be taken on by the women. For example, women needed to be more involved in harvesting while still carrying out their normal duties. Compensation programs intended to mitigate the project’s adverse impacts also tended to be gender-biased. Compensation checks were always written to the head of the household, which is, in Basotho tradition, the eldest male except in the case of death or separation. This procedure failed to recognize women’s involvement in crop production and resource collection. Whereas women may have had considerable input in determining the use of resources such as crops (e.g., marijuana, see page 26), garden produce, and fuel wood before the dam, men primarily determined the use of monetary compensation. This had severe impacts on the household. Women tend to invest their money in the welfare of the family (e.g., clothing, school fees, medicine), while men tend to invest in livestock, an asset with few immediate benefits for the family. When men are not present in the household due to death or separation, women typically engage in sharecropping to survive. LHWP compensation policies failed to meet the needs of these most powerless households, as will be described in detail on page 31. Other gender impacts included the disproportionate exposure of local women and girls to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases introduced to the area by LHWP construction workers. Young women and girls are at greater risk of contracting HIV/AIDS for biological reasons, which are compounded by the prevalence of rape and coerced sex and the unpopularity of condoms.

14 The Damage Done certain stone below their village had the graves…bob up and down in the water? power to attract rain. When the reservoir And people will use this water? It will be submerged the stone, its power was water of what kind which has poison of diminished and villagers feel that graves inside it?”48 Dreams plagued a drought is now prevalent in the area as a woman who had seen Katse reservoir result.46 flood her grandmother’s grave. In the dreams, her grandmother cried that she According to Basotho tradition, the dead is covered in water and confusedly asked “gain additional power after death and how she could let this happen. People continued to play an important role in resettled from Mohale were happy to the life of the family. They are hear that graves would be removed, but remembered, feared, honored, and found the decision where to relocate obeyed. As upholders of social harmony them problematic. Some households and morality, they intervene to were moving to various locations in the communicate with and if necessary to lowlands while others were staying near punish their living children.”47 Ancestors Mohale, and all of them wanted to are often the focal point of Basotho remain close to the graves. spirituality. Graves, therefore, are extremely significant because they are in Ash-heaps have special significance to effect the portal between the spiritual Basotho (particularly women) because world of the ancestor and the physical they are the burial sites of stillborn and world of the descendant. miscarried children. Ash from the heaps is also used in medicines. LHDA has Katse Reservoir submerged hundreds of been reluctant to relocate ash heaps, and graves and many more were disinterred they are not recognized as graves in because they rested under proposed practice despite being classified as access roads. Affected people did not graves in policy.49 know how to advise project consultants on what procedures should be used to It would be almost impossible to relocate the graves because exhumation mitigate impacts such as these. The of graves is alien to cultural practice in changes that they wrought were the highlands. Nevertheless, affected irreversible and fundamentally altered people uncertainly agreed to allow the the way people perceived themselves LHWP to let graves in the inundation and the world around them. The influx zone be flooded, but asked the project to of construction workers indirectly posed move graves that would be affected by a challenge to the authority of traditional road construction. The LHDA assumed leaders. The introduction of AIDS and the costs of exhumation and reburial in roads threatened villagers’ sense of almost every case. personal and economic security. The destruction of graves and culturally The issue of graves provoked severe important objects, in effect, questioned psychological traumas for many affected traditions and belief systems. people. Many were concerned about long-forgotten graves that nevertheless The following sections will detail the held the remains of ancestors. One man troubled attempts to mitigate these and asked, “Does it ever happen that other project impacts.

15 The Damage Done

1 Transformation Resource Centre, Since the Water 27 One consultant hired to carry out impact Came… Kids in Lesotho Talk About Katse Dam, Save studies at Mohale Tunnel actually identified the Children Fund, Maseru, 1999, p. 9. 2 downstream impacts as a major project obstacle Norwegian Water Resources and Energy in late 1995, but his contract was unilaterally Administration, Appraisal – Muela Hydropower terminated shortly thereafter. Project, Lesotho, February 1993, p. 8. 28 3 Christian Boehm and David Hall, LHDA Contract Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael 648: Socio-Economic Survey, September 1999, p. 20. Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 29 Ibid., p. 46. Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 3. 30 4 Ben Molapo, “Will LHWP Ever Benefit the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Locals?” The Mirror, December 4, 1992, p. 11. Administration, Appraisal – Muela Hydropower 31 Malefane Maema and Norman Reynolds, LHWP- Project, Lesotho, February 1993, p. 9. 5 induced Displacement: Context, Impacts, M. Tshabalala and S.D. Turner, 1988 Socio- Rehabilitation Strategies, Implementation Experience Economic Census of the Lesotho Highlands Water and Future Options. January 1995, p. 17. Project Phase 1A Areas, LHDA, September 1989, p. 32 Robert Archer, Trust in Construction? Christian 32 and LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Aid, 1995, p. 32. Task 3 Report, Executive Summary, May 1996, p. 17. 33 6 LHDA, Mohale Advanced Infrastructure: Draft Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Social and Environmental Impact Assessment, April Administration, Appraisal – Muela Hydropower 1995, p. 4-5. Project, Lesotho, February 1993, pp. 8-9. 34 7 Panos Institute, Interview with Mepa Mokhothu, Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the November 1997, p. 1. LHWP Phase 1A Area: 1999 Monitoring Report, 35 Consortium for International Development, Baseline January 2000, p. 3. Epidemiological Survey: Phase 1A, May 1993. 8 Ibid., app. 2, p. 1. 36 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Thayer Scudder, 9 Ibid., app. 2, p. 4. 10 and Derek Yach, Report of the Panel of Christian Boehm and David Hall, LHDA Contract Environmental Experts, August 1994, p. 22. 648: Socio-Economic Survey, September 1999, p. ii. 37 Paray Hospital, pers. comm., November 2000. 11 Ibid., p. i. 38 John Ledger and Thayer Scudder, Report of the 12 LHDA, LHWP Phase 1B Draft Environmental Panel of Environmental Experts, April 7, 1995, p. 12. Action Plan, May 1997, p. 8. 39 13 Transformation Resource Centre, Since the Water Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the Came…Kids in Lesotho Talk About Katse Dam, Save LHWP Phase 1A Area: 1999 Monitoring Report, the Children Fund, Maseru, 1999, p. 12. January 2000, p. 3. 40 14 LHDA, Mohale Advanced Infrastructure: Draft Stephen Gill, A Short History of Lesotho, 1993, p. Social and Environmental Impact Assessment, April 52. 15 1995, p. 6-1. Ibid., p. 3. 41 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in 16 Ibid., p. i-ii. 17 Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in 2000, pp. 107-108. Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June 42 Some villages in the remote Qacha’s Nek district 2000, p. 76. have been left virtually bereft of cattle in recent years 18 LHDA Public Health Officer, pers. comm., 1999. 19 even though the district has only one pothole-ridden Pers. comm., 1999. 20 road. Qacha’s Nek’s rural areas are, however, some of LHDA. Planning and Design with an Option to Supervise Construction of Feeder Roads and the most poverty stricken-areas of the country, and the situation has worsened in recent years, perhaps Reservoir Crossings, November 1993, p. 1. 21 causing an increase in thefts. (see Sechaba Field Operations Staff, pers. comm., 2000. 22 Consultants, Poverty in Lesotho, 1994, p. 22). Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring of 43 Ibid. LHWP Phase 1A: 1999 Monitoring Report, January 44 Pers. comm., November 5, 1999. 2000, app. 2, p. 1. 45 23 Lesotho Council of Nongovernmental Sofonea Shale, “Community Condemns LHDA for Organisations, Report of the NGO (Follow-up) Visit to Drowning of Villager,” Mopheme/The Survivor, Mapeleng, February 23, 1996, p. 6. January 23, 2001. 46 AfriDev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the 24 Lori Pottinger, Lesotho Highlands Trip Report, LHWP Phase 1A Area: 1999 Monitoring Report. IRN, September 1996, p. 8. 25 January 2000, Appendix 2, p. 2. Hunting-Consult 4 Joint Venture, Resettlement & 47 Stephen Gill, A Short History of Lesotho, 1993, p. Development Study: Housing & Infrastructure 58. Implementation – Monthly Progress Report No 2, May 48 Panos Institute, Interview with Sebili Tau, 1997, p. 4. 26 November 1997, p. 5. LHDA, Microseismic Activity At Mapeleng Village, 49 LHDA, Phase 1A Compensation Plan, February 21, Katse Dam, March 20, 1996, p. 5. 1990, p. 56.

Scattered by the Dam: LHWP Resettlement

“The LHWP is bringing Lesotho Several years later, LHDA budgeted 4 millions, but those who sacrificed their roughly $16 million for its Mohale resettlement program, approximately homes; their land, their suitable and 5 accepted lifestyle and standards to $31,200 per resettled household. Even give way to the project are despised though this figure is only half the amount per household spent at Katse, it and treated as if they were non- is still around three times as large as the Basotho.”1 average per-household resettlement cost Morenakemang Tikoe, Chairperson, found in the study of World Bank- Community Liaison Committee funded resettlement programs.6

Therefore, the shortcomings of LHWP Resettlement Budget resettlement cannot be easily blamed on Compared to other resettlement projects a lack of funding. around the world, the LHDA resettlement program is extremely well funded. The reason Mohale resettlers were LHDA provided resettled households allocated about half the amount with a cinderblock house or houses of budgeted for Katse is the repeated equivalent size to the floor area of their underestimation of the numbers of lost homes on a small site demarcated by people to be displaced. At Mohale, a chain-link fence. They also provided a LHDA’s initial 1993 resettlement latrine, a disturbance allowance of about estimate was approximately 210 $1,000, and, in some cases, water supply households.7 This figure had already after significant delays. The cost of increased 150 percent by 1996, to 516 providing these resettlement packages at households.8 Budgets were based on Katse Dam amounted to approximately undercounted resettlement figures, and $5 million,2 which translated into households resettled in later stages faced approximately $62,500 per resettled a growing budget crunch. household – a very high figure. In a

1999 survey of 17 World Bank-funded The underestimation of displacement projects involving resettlement, only one figures also contributes to overly project spent even half of the amount per optimistic resettlement target dates. In household that the LHDA budgeted at March 1995, the governments of both Katse.3 Unfortunately, the large budgets Lesotho and South Africa were anxious have failed to translate into successful to keep target dates for water delivery to resettlement. Resettled villages at Katse Gauteng and asked the World Bank for still have not been supplied with water permission to proceed with filling Katse and other promised infrastructure such reservoir before all households had been as roads, many replacement houses removed from the basin. When this was exhibit shoddy construction, and denied, the Joint Permanent Technical development programs directed toward Committee (JPTC),9 the project resettled people have stagnated. oversight body, disappointedly

complained in a memo to the Bank that

17 Scattered by the Dam resettlement prior to inundation was a even claimed they would refuse to “rather stringent requirement.”10 relocate unless offered land of equal quantity and quality.15 LHDA threatened Target dates for the inundation of that people who refused to move would Mohale Reservoir have similarly rushed not be compensated, and this broke their the resettlement of hundreds of resolve. Said one, “At least we will get households. Project consultants something if we agree to move. But if complained in 1997 that LHDA’s we stay, we get nothing. They are resettlement section was “under- frightening us so we will agree with resourced and not able to complete its them.”16 Access to arable land figured so work on time” and described the process prominently in affected people’s survival as a “formidable bottleneck to the strategies that the Panel of Experts engineering of (the) project.”11 One year claimed that “households who lose over later, the Panel of Experts characterized 50 percent of their arable land should the Mohale resettlement as “a crash have the option of resettling” outside the program.”12 Experience has shown that project area, because “it will be difficult, when resettlement is rushed in this way, if not impossible, to restore the living infrastructure at resettlement sites is standards of a majority of such often shoddy or incomplete, certain households if they remain in the compensation measures are overlooked catchment.”17 This statement bodes ill or delayed, and participation processes for the 405 families at Katse and Muela are compromised. LHDA moved the first who have already lost all of their fields group of resettlers from Mohale before and the hundreds more who lost over water supply systems were in place in half of their cropland without any resettlement areas and before suitable possibility of resettlement. skills training programs were devised.13 Compensation and development Noting that most of the future resettlers programs for other affected people also mentioned that access to agricultural tended to suffer because staff from other land would be their main requirement in departments were delegated resettlement assessing possible resettlement sites, responsibilities in order to meet project LHDA consultants investigated the deadlines. possibility of resettling people on land in South Africa’s Free State Province.18 Lack of Land The consultants identified several farms The fact that Lesotho is extremely land- that were for sale at a cheap price near stressed added another complication to the Caledon River (the Lesotho border) the LHWP resettlement program. that would have been suitable reset- Villagers who once lived near the oxbow tlement sites. Many of the households curve of the Senqunyane River enjoyed facing the prospect of resettlement were some of the most fertile land in Lesotho, excited about this possibility. A group of and some 3000 people relied on food about 40 families hoped to establish a grown in Mohale Dam’s inundation zone “self-sufficient agricultural community” for subsistence.14 Therefore, when on one or more Free State farms.19 All of LHDA informed them that they would them were “serious” farmers, and some be resettled to make way for Mohale, possessed skills in building, carpentry they demanded replacement land. Some and mechanics.

18 Scattered by the Dam

Indeed land-for-land compensation is would continue to be their primary generally agreed to be “best practice” in means of subsistence after resettle- involuntary resettlement programs ment.22 Without a land-for-land option throughout the world because it involves available, most people chose to be the least amount of disruption to compensated through annual cash livelihoods and allows resettlers to pass payments with the hope that they would the land on to their children.20 In fact discover sharecropping opportunities or early project documents indicate that other means of restoring their liveli- LHDA consultants also subscribed to hoods at their new resettlement site. In this view: “the land for land option is this way, they spread the risk across a essential in order to avoid impoverish- range of survival strategies. Acquisition ment of substantial numbers of families of land at the resettlement site offered in the project area.”21 only minimal returns. Many of the resettlement sites have only marginal Unfortunately for the potential land, and at some sites, only 40 percent homesteaders though, the LHDA of arable land is ploughed. The rest is dropped the Free State resettlement too poor in quality to farm profitably. option for reasons that have never been officially explained. The move could Some resettlers possessed little or no have been politically difficult because land prior to resettlement, and relied the Free State is still considered almost entirely on sharecropping, or in “conquered territory” by many Basotho, the case of the sick and elderly, on and the return of even a few hectares to support networks of relatives and Lesotho may have been seen by some as friends. In this informal mountain a concession to that view. The newly economy, “repayment for some food at a elected ANC government in South crucial moment might be through an Africa may also have been loath to offer offer of labor, or when some seeds have land because it was in the middle of an germinated, or some livestock had extremely sensitive land redistribution produced offspring.”23 The Lesotho- program for its own landless citizens. It based Sechaba Consultants found that 27 would have set off a political firestorm percent of the people living in the region to give the impression that the South affected by Mohale Dam did not own African government gave land to fields.24 These people were forced to Lesotho before it gave land to those who relocate wherever their support network bore the full brunt of apartheid, despite relocated. Over one third of the resettlers the fact that South Africa was in effect chose their destination based on its “taking” land in Lesotho for its water proximity to relatives and/or their chief, supply. an indication that they were attempting to keep survival networks intact.25 Many Access to fields and pastures continued were unsuccessful in their attempt to be the primary requirement in because households scattered to different selection of resettlement sites. Nearly 40 resettlement sites. The Panel of Experts percent of the resettlers based their described the sad case of a landless decision mainly on this factor, and woman who had been sharecropping on almost 70 percent of affected households one of her brother’s fields before the indicated that agricultural activities project started. When the time for

19 Scattered by the Dam resettlement arrived, she relocated to the Transformation Resource Centre another part of the mountains where interviewed one household that bought a sharecropping opportunities were not new kitchen cabinet set, table, chairs, available; her brother moved to the and window drapes one week after being lowlands.26 This left her without a vital resettled from Mohale. They paid for the source of support. One similarly affected furniture with their disturbance person said, “We are dispersing like the allowance despite the fact that no young ones of a bird, others [here], member of the household was employed. others there! We are separating from our They were not eligible for further friends, these ones who were looking compensation, and they had made no after us [saying] ‘Grandmother, take crop-sharing arrangements.29 some porridge.’ It is cruelty.”27 For these reasons, project consultants Lowlands economy encouraged resettlers to choose to The shock of adjusting to the lowlands relocate within the Mohale project area economy is one of the most serious instead of moving to the lowlands.30 The traumas experienced by people resettled World Bank Panel of Experts did not from the Mohale area. Resettlers rarely approve of this. Their feeling was that possess skills that are marketable in this compromised affected people’s urban and peri-urban environments, so participation in the project. They also few are able to earn living wages. The feared that if people stayed, there would Transformation Resource Centre be more competitors for fewer resources interviewed a single mother who had on the banks of Mohale Reservoir. been resettled on the outskirts of Maseru Finally, they believed that “more oppor- with her invalid grandmother. She tunities for restoring and improving complained of the high cost of living at living standards are available in the her new home, and noted that she has foothills and lowlands” and that domes- not received any skills training and was tic migration patterns demonstrated this now trying to resell porcelain knick- fact.31 The conflicting viewpoints of the knacks to supplement her annual $120 various project advisors illustrate the compensation check.28 The extra difficulty of planning a resettlement expenses of living in the lowlands are process that does no harm. In plain difficult for highlands residents to terms, there are no good solutions. predict, and often to cover. School fees tend to be considerably higher in the Host-Resettler Conflicts lowlands. The scarcity of fuel wood Resettled people have frequently found means that money must be spent on themselves in conflict with their new paraffin and a heater to burn it. People neighbors. Chiefs of potential host resettling to urban areas are billed for villages are usually quite eager to attract water. Added to these dilemmas are the displaced people because LHDA pressures of “keeping up with the promises infrastructure development in Joneses” amidst comparatively wealthy the host community as well as in the neighbors. Some resettlers spend resettlement site. During inspection significant portions of their disturbance visits before resettlement, the chiefs allowance on new furniture to outfit their often assure representatives of Mohale new Western-style dwellings. Staff of communities that, even though there are

20 Scattered by the Dam no fields, an adequate water supply or The additional strain on already limited pastures, accommodating displaced resources also creates conflict. The people should not be a major problem. resettlers must compete with the host They assure the resettlers that they can community for overstressed pastures or find ways to sharecrop, that LHDA will else keep their livestock at cattle posts develop the water supply, and that high in the mountains. Many resettlers resettlers can either keep their animals at opt to avoid clashes with their hosts, their cattle posts or reduce their herd leaving their herds at the cattle post. sizes and begin commercial livestock However, this requires the owners to enterprises.32 hire herdboys to keep watch over the animals, at a cost of approximately $300 In practice, the process rarely, if ever, per year.37 This is not only a significant happens this smoothly. Some host expense – it also means that the family community members are hostile to the loses direct access to draft animals and newcomers from the very start. One man milk, faces an increased risk of stock in the process of resettling from Mohale theft, and to a degree suffers a loss of said, “The host people (say) we are big- cultural identity due to infrequent headed because we have much money interaction with the animals.38 the project gave us.”33 Resettlers are also commonly “concerned at being an easy Problems like these arise even when host target for thieves and swindlers – it was communities are consulted and informed said some known thieves had been of the process. When prior consultation describing the villagers as their does not occur, it predictably leads to ‘cheques.’”34 The perception that resentment from the hosts toward the resettlers are rich with compensation resettlers. LHDA neglected to inform the money adds to their difficulties in Makhoakhoeng host village of the finding sharecropping opportunities. impending arrival of displaced people Very few resettled households have been from Mohale Dam until earth-moving able to secure such arrangements. No equipment started preparing the households at the Nazareth resettlement resettlement site. LHDA officials told site have succeeded in doing this.35 One the village that they had mistakenly of the reasons for this is that landholders assumed that there was not a chief in the in the host community demand terms area and that they had leased the land that are impossible for the resettling from Maseru City Council. This error households to meet.36 led to extreme hostility toward the new arrivals. The Lesotho-based NGO LHDA is notoriously sluggish about Transformation Resource Centre improving water supply. The regularly recorded examples of such resettlement sites of Makotoko and hostilities: Nazareth still do not have adequate water supply systems. LHDA’s failure to “Soon after resettling in Makhoakhoeng, provide promised infrastructure like this an older person from Molikaliko (the also strains the host-resettler displaced village) passed away. The relationship, because the hosts’ deceased person’s family and friends expectations are that the resettlers will gathered on the day of the funeral to find bring benefits to their communities. armed members of the host community

21 Scattered by the Dam blocking the way to the burial site. They to the resettled community coinciden- threatened them with violence if they tally lay adjacent to property belonging insisted on burying the deceased, saying to Lesotho’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. that they did not recognize them as being The minister repeatedly fomented part of the village. Intimidated, the opposition against the resettlers in the people of Molikaliko desperately looked community and apparently convinced for another burial site, finding one in the the Minister of Natural Resources to neighboring village of Masianokeng, announce in late 2000 that the commun- several kilometers away. When a second ity would be resettled yet again. He resettlee passed away several months claimed that they would be relocated to later, both villages denied them access to the Free State or to other land in Le- burial sites. They were forced to bury the sotho. This announcement came against body on residential land which the host the wishes of the LHDA and World community says is near the source of Bank, and the resettled community is their water supply.”39 unanimously opposed to the course of action that the Minister decreed.42 One Members of the host community (backed community representative warned proj- by LHDA) threatened to exhume the ect authorities and the government that body, a move that drew threats of “the affected and the would-be affected violence from the resettlers. The conflict will not tolerate ‘games’ being played became so charged that the deceased against Makhoakhoeng residents” and woman’s daughter brought the case to claimed that if the community is not the World Commission on Dams (WCD) allowed to “stay in peace, LHDA will at a hearing in Cairo: never ever resettle any one in this area.”43 “I’m sad to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, on the 20th October, the The Resettlers’ Declaration project authorities came to tell us we After having suffered through a poorly have to exhume the body of my mother. planned resettlement process, people This is the saddest thing I’ve come who had been moved during the first across. They were all ready to exhume phase of resettlement advised but my family refused. I’m not sure what representatives of the soon-to-be-moved is happening back home – I might find villages to demand that LHDA fulfill all my mother is exhumed…the excuse that of their promises regarding resettlement LHDA put across was that they were before they attempt to move anyone going to exhume because of the bad from their home. “If you wait until after relationship between the resettlers and you’ve been moved,” they warned, “you the hosts, but that site belonged to will find that you have no more power LHDA.”40 than a toothless dog.”44 The second group of resettlers heeded their call. Tensions eased only after LHDA promised to address demands of the host After the visits, representatives of the to- community, including provision of be-resettled communities composed a water, roads, electricity, schools, and a declaration containing 15 demands, clinic.41 Sadly, the story does not end which they said needed to be addressed there. The one hectare of land allocated before they would consent to leaving

22 Scattered by the Dam their homes. They demanded, among official reluctantly began reading the other things, to receive compensation declaration. The affected people prior to resettlement, lump sum recognized it immediately and cheered compensation as opposed to an annual as each of the declaration’s points were payment, the resettlement of culturally read.46 important sites, access to burial sites above the inundation zone, and the right In the following weeks, LHDA stepped to reject incomplete resettlement sites. up their assurances that all resettlement The communities then signed the infrastructure would be in place before declaration and submitted it to LHDA. the next group of households was forced to leave Mohale. They regularly took the LHDA and the World Bank responded affected people to the resettlement sites, swiftly, saying that local NGOs were so that they could observe the imposing their views on affected preparations for their eventual arrival. communities and accusing them of They saw little evidence of completed “sowing confusion” and “fostering a infrastructure, but the LHDA’s promises complaint culture” in Mohale villages.45 were so convincing that three The affected communities maintained households dropped their objections and their position, which led to a series of agreed to the resettlement on January 23, heated meetings with LHDA officials. 2001. When they arrived at the resettlement site, they quickly The issue came to a head in April 2000 discovered that water supply systems during a visit of the World Bank’s and toilets had not been installed. They LHWP Task Team. The team had been were forced to walk a considerable notified of the resettlers’ declaration by distance to collect water from the host local NGOs, and decided to investigate community’s source, and had to ask the matter. During a meeting at Ha permission to use neighbors’ latrines.47 Takatso, a member of the Task Team held up a copy of an English translation of the declaration and asked the 1 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With The Old,” Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. assembled resettlers if they were aware 2 R.T. Mochebelele and O.M. Letsela, LHWP – of a letter that their NGO allies had Concerns and Benefits of Dams Including the recently sent to the World Bank. The Environmental and Social Impacts and the Associated Mitigation Measures for Sustainability, December 8-9, affected people were confused, not 1999, p. 25. certain which letter the World Bank 3 John H. Eriksen, “Comparing the Economic official was referring to. Having implied Planning for Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,” The Economics of Involuntary that local communities had no ownership Resettlement: Questions and Challenges, Ed. Michael of the declaration that he held in his M. Cernea, 1999, p. 90-91. hand, the official proceeded with his 4 Figure adjusted for inflation. 5 R.T. Mochebelele and O.M. Letsela, LHWP – speech. At this, a member of the Concerns and Benefits of Dams Including the Transformation Resource Centre (TRC) Environmental and Social Impacts and the Associated interrupted and asked the official to read Mitigation Measures for Sustainability, December 8-9, 1999, p. 25. the letter in question. The official 6 John H. Eriksen, “Comparing the Economic initially declined, saying that it was now Planning for Voluntary and Involuntary time to proceed to “the real issues.” TRC Resettlement,” The Economics of Involuntary Resettlement: Questions and Challenges, Ed. Michael members insisted, however, and the M. Cernea, 1999, pp. 90-91.

23 Scattered by the Dam

7 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 26 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, 1, Vol. 1 – Executive Summary, November 1995, p. 2. and Thayer Scudder, The Report of the Panel of 8 Robert Hitchock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Environmental Experts, November 2000, p. 24. Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 27 Olivia Bennett, “Tearing the Threads: The Social Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 17. Costs of Forced Resettlement,” Oral History, Spring 9 Now called the Lesotho Highlands Water 1999, p. 41. Commission (LHWC), the JPTC’s is comprised of 28 Transformation Resource Centre, “Not Even a Place delegates from both Lesotho and South Africa. Its to Bury Our Dead,” Work for Justice, Nov/Dec 1999, responsibilities include ensuring that Treaty No. 53, p. 8. requirements are upheld and approval of all contracts. 29 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., It monitors and approves all LHDA activities. February 2001. 10 John Ledger and Thayer Scudder, Report of the 30 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Panel of Environmental Experts, April 7, 1995, p. 11. Mentis and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 11 Hunting-Consult 4 Joint Venture, LHDA Contract Environmental Experts, July 1997, p. 82. 1012 VO#5, Monthly Progress Report No. 2, May 31 Ibid., p. 83. 1997, p. 1. 32 Malefetsane John Lepele, Report on the Phase 1B 12 Len Lerer, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Resettlement and Development Investigation Mission Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, March of the Thaba Bosiu Foothill Area, Sechaba 1998, p. 19. Consultants, February 27, 1996. 13 Transformation Resource Centre, “Makotoko: A 33 Olivia Bennett, “Tearing The Threads: The Social New Home for Resettlees,” Work for Justice, Issue 54, Costs of Forced Resettlement,” Oral History, Spring December 2000, p. 12 1999, p. 40. 14 LHDA, Lesotho Highlands Water Project Phase 1B 34 Ibid. Environmental Impact Assessment: Executive 35 Pers. comm., February 2001. Summary, May 1997, p. 21. 36 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, 15 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 1 Report, Volume 1 – Executive Summary, November Environmental Experts, November 2000, p. 17. 1995, p. 15. 37 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, 16 Lori Pottinger, Lesotho Highlands Trip Report, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of International Rivers Network, September 1996, p. 10. Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 28. 17 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael 38 Ibid., p. 28. Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 39 Transformation Resource Centre, “Not Even a Place Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 11. to Bury Our Dead,” Work for Justice, Nov/Dec 1999, 18 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task p. 9. 2 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, February 1996, p. 40 Anna Moepi, The Impact of the LHWP on the 18. Community Resettled from Molikaliko. December 8-9, 1999. 19 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 41 Ibid., p. 9. 2 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, February 1996, p. 42 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., 31. December 12, 2000. 20 World Commission on Dams, Dams and 43 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With the Old,” Development: A New Framework for Decision- Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. Making, November 2000, p. 107 and World Bank, 44 Transformation Resource Centre, “Lesotho Operational Directive 4.30: Involuntary Resettlement, Resettlers Demand Improvements in Resettlement June 1990, p. 2. Package,” World Rivers Review, June 2000, p. 4. 21 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 45 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., 1 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, November 1995, April 2000. p. 95. 46 Transformation Resource Centre, Letter to Andrew 22 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task Macoun, LHWP Task Team Leader, May 18, 2000. 3 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, May 1996, pp. 3- 47 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., 4, 4-11. January 30, 2001. 23 Olivia Bennett, “Tearing the Threads: The Social Costs of Forced Resettlement,” Oral History, Spring 1999, p. 42. 24 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June 2000, p. 100. 25 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 3 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, May 1996, p. 3-4.

Replacing What Was Lost: The Compensation Plan

“When the dam comes there will be The Original Policy nowhere where I will plough…And Initially, instead of replacing lost land then it will be that I am that man who with land elsewhere, LHDA substituted just sits… And then it will happen that bags of grain for those displaced. The I will change and will end up stealing, plan delivered maize in quantities that LHDA claimed equaled or surpassed the as a result of thinking too hard about amounts that farmers could produce on this agriculture of my home area here. the lost land. Agricultural records That is the thing which will remain indicated that maize harvests in the 1 there in this heart of mine.” mountains averaged less than 1000kg Sebili Tau, Molikaliko village per hectare, so LHDA based its compensation rate on that figure. For The LHDA spent over $20 million to example, a half of a hectare of arable compensate people who lost assets to the land would be compensated with 500kg project. Compared with many other of maize every year. The table on page projects involving involuntary 27 lists other resources that were resettlement, the LHWP’s compensation compensated by LHDA. All told, program is relatively generous. 1990 Compensation Policy2 1997 Compensation Policy3 Arable land above 1000 m2 970kg maize + 30kg beans 1) 970kg maize + 30kg per hectare lost for 15 years beans per hectare lost for 50 years; or 2) $300 per hectare for 50 years; or 3) a one-time lump sum payment of $6,000 per hectare Arable land below 1000 m2 One-time lump sum One-time lump sum payment per m2 payment of 50 cents per m2 Garden land One-time lump sum One-time lump sum payment of $1 per m2 payment of $10 per m2 Fruit trees One-time lump sum One-time lump sum payment of $22 + 5 payment of $96 per tree replacement seedlings per tree Other trees One-time lump sum One-time lump sum payment of $11 + 5 payment of $34 per tree replacement seedlings per tree Communal land 560kg of fodder per hectare One-time lump sum every year for five years payment of $1,800 per hectare

25 Replacing What Was Lost approximately 20,000 people were than the purchase price of the grains, members of households who were due pulses and fodder.”10 compensation, 1 percent of Lesotho’s total population at the time.4 LHDA Compensation for arable land was also spent approximately $13 million (1.3% far from adequate from a nutritional of the overall project budget) to fund the standpoint. The compensation maize compensation program at Katse and may have closely approximated the cash Muela.5 value of crops grown on the lost land, but they did not replicate the diversity of Affected people and their NGO allies crops that affected people produced in criticized the compensation policy. They their fields and gardens. Basotho farmers felt the cash compensation rates were grow wheat, beans, peas, and sorghum in “grossly undervalued.”6 They also their fields and a variety of vegetables in pushed to have compensation payments their gardens. The maize-only compen- continue until livelihoods had been sation package contributed to protein restored, not for a set 15 years. Land is and nutrient deficiencies. LHDA mod- an asset that is passed down from ified the package in 1993 so that 3 generation to generation, they argued, percent of the compensation package and short-term compensation would was comprised of beans. It was a small mean the eventual impoverishment of move in the right direction, but the Panel their families and future generations. of Experts has noted, “The compensation The LHWP had left nearly 25% of the package still does not replicate com- project-area population landless7 and if pletely the diet of people residing in the development programs did not succeed Highlands.”11 (which they have yet to do), they would be left without a source of subsistence Marijuana income after the 15-year period. Another serious deficiency of the compensation plan resulted from the Implementation of the compensation failure to compensate for Lesotho’s most program was fraught with problems, too. valuable cash crop, marijuana. Maize is Deliveries were frequently not on time, the crop most commonly seen in losses were overlooked, and Basotho’s mountain fields, but the compensation grain and fodder was marijuana (dagga in Lesotho) that often of inferior quality.8 Households Highland people frequently plant in field that received lump sum compensation margins is the real money-maker, despite for trees usually spent the money “on its illegal status in Lesotho. LHWP things not connected with the consultants conservatively estimated that replacement of the lost trees,” and the the crop is “cultivated on 10% of the replacement seedlings tended to “die arable area, and accounts for 60% of the because there (were) no suitable places arable crop net revenue.”12 to replant them.”9 LHDA purchased Unfortunately, much of the land where compensation grain from South Africa, this valuable crop is grown will be doing little for the local economy. It then inundated by reservoirs, a serious blow transported the grain to the highlands at to the survival strategies of affected exorbitant costs that were often “greater people. The loss of marijuana income has troubling gender implications too,

26 Replacing What Was Lost because “the income particularly marijuana, and when they do, a timely benefits women. In an area that is donation of sheep or goats often otherwise heavily dependent for cash appeases the authorities. Because of the revenue on the declining receipts from infrequency of prosecution, the growth labor migration, the earnings from dagga and sale of marijuana is not perceived to support essential expenditures on, for be an altogether illicit activity. In fact, example, education and health.”13 one LHDA-funded video plainly shows Teachers in Lesotho will back up this villagers happily stripping the leaves assertion, noting that many parents can from the plant and preparing it to be only pay their children’s school fees dried. LHWP access roads, though, have after they have sold their marijuana crop. increased the frequency of police patrols One woman resettled from Mohale Dam thus increasing the risk of large-scale testified to the World Commission on marijuana production, and marijuana Dams that before the LHWP began: traders have “indicated that they (will) no longer trade with those villagers who “We were planting maize, wheat and are moving closer to more populated everything that sustains our lives, areas.”17 including marijuana. We know this substance is illegal, but it enables us to Revising The Compensation Plan send our children to school. In other In response to the mounting local and words, we were planting money, international criticism and in preparation literally. We were watering these plants for construction of the second LHWP with water which is found in abundance dam, Mohale Dam, LHDA revised its at our places. And then the project compensation policy in 1997. The new came.”14 policy (made retroactive to populations affected by Katse and Muela) extended In a country plagued by rapid soil the compensation time period to 50 years degradation, marijuana is ideal for small and included 80 percent increases in farmers because it requires little cash compensation rates for arable land. investment, involves little risk, and pays It allowed compensation recipients to big returns. Marijuana grows naturally in choose to be paid in an annual cash Lesotho, often on marginal land, so seed payment; an annual grain payment; or and fertilizer do not need to be through a one-time lump sum payment purchased. Highland people also value with the important proviso that people the crop highly for its medicinal effects electing this option must first devise in both humans and animals.15 The “viable” business plans. The revised plan majority of marijuana is grown discontinued annual fodder deliveries to interspersed with maize in remote fields affected villages but did provide for the far from roads, but many households compensation of communal assets have a few plants growing outside their through lump sum payments to villages. houses and larger plots in their gardens. These villages, though, were also According to some reports, a few required to devise “viable” business households sow marijuana as a single plans before they received their crop in fields that are nearly the size of payments. The LHDA budgeted one hectare.16 Fortunately for the approximately $10 million to growers, police pay little heed to compensate affected households at

27 Replacing What Was Lost

Mohale Dam, 2.1 percent of the total recipients often “expend their money project budget. The table on page 27 very quickly” and “adult males in the outlines the revised compensation household appropriate the cash for their policy’s rates. own use” often neglecting the needs of women and children in the household.24 Most affected people had little Time will tell if similar problems occur understanding of the policy, “concluding among the Mohale-affected. Indications that the compensation scheme is nothing are that they will because local experts but a complicated morass of numbers.”18 estimate that “an income of M500 per Said one, “You know, [the compensation month is needed for a family of six (the scheme] has made our heads stop…as to average size of LHWP families) without [how it works].”19 Said another, “The access to arable land. That amount is affected people do not have a say in the double the amount that many compensation policy. It is created by resettler/relocatee households are LHDA, and we have no choice but to currently receiving from their annual accept it.”20 entitlements.”25

Despite this lack of understanding (or Compensation deliveries proceeded a bit perhaps because of it), the vast majority more smoothly in the early stages of of people who lost arable land to Mohale Mohale Dam construction than they had Dam (84 percent) opted to be at Katse and Muela. The LHDA gave its compensated in cash.21 They did so field operations branches power to settle because cash payments could be easily compensation claims on the spot without used to cover expenses like school fees, needing to receive approval from the medical bills, and household goods. Maseru office. It also attempted to Meanwhile, when LHDA presented the improve its ability to verify same compensation options to affected compensation claims through more villages at Katse and Muela, the careful record keeping of project- communities overwhelmingly chose the affected assets using photographs and in-kind compensation.22 Affected people detailed lists. at Katse also based their decision on the liquidity of cash payments, but viewed Unfortunately, the revised compensation this as potentially dangerous rather than policy also had some serious gaps and its an opportunity. They did not trust their implementation ran into some significant ability to budget the payment throughout snags. The following are the most the year in a way that would ensure they serious and remain unresolved to the could feed themselves. Cash could be present day. spent frivolously whereas grain would most probably be used to fill hungry Lump sum compensation stomachs. This fear is borne out by Certain affected people selected the global experience. The Panel of Experts lump-sum compensation option, notes that, in resettlement and meaning they would receive a pro-rated compensation programs throughout the amount of cash in a one-time payment. world, “annual payments alone do not LHDA staff frequently expressed provide sufficient income for even concerns that these lump-sum recipients restoring living standards”23 because would “drink away” the money, be left

28 Replacing What Was Lost without any means of support, and The fodder also encouraged livestock become an all-too-obvious example of owners to keep too many animals on the how affected communities have been left crowded pastures. LHDA’s primary worse off by the LHWP. Therefore, the concern, though, was the rising costs of LHDA required that everyone who transporting the fodder to the highlands. preferred a lump-sum payment devise a The cost for transport rose 450% in two “viable” business plan as a condition of years to an annual total of approximately payment. This presented a serious $100,000 in 1995 (and that was for 300 complication. Because affected people fewer tons of fodder than the amount have very little experience in drawing up delivered two years earlier).28 The end of business plans and the LHDA did not fodder deliveries caused no small have effective criteria to evaluate them, amount of disquiet among affected only a handful of affected people have communities whose ever-leaner cattle yet received lump-sum compensation were forced out of reservoir grazing after four years of waiting. A staff areas. In late 1998, they wrote a petition member of the Transformation Resource protesting the lack of compensation. Centre said the plan was “ridiculous.” (See box) The LHDA promised to “How can you expect a 50-year-old, compensate each community with a ordinary villager to produce a business lump sum payment for their communal plan? Even for someone with a high lands, but they again stipulated that the school certificate, like me, it would be village must first devise a viable difficult to produce one.”26 The delays “development” project. None of the became so protracted that they prompted communities, even those who devised the Panel of Experts to scold, “The plans, have yet received their funds… do not belong to LHDA but compensation after a delay of more than rather to the individuals who lost assets three years. to the project. In effect, what (LHDA) is attempting to do is to make decisions for Residents of the village of Ha Nkokana individuals after having given them the lost considerable amounts of grazing option of choosing a lump sum cash land to an LHWP airstrip and rock payment.”27 Today, the World Bank says quarries. They received fodder this poorly conceived plan was based on compensation until 1997, but it then “heroic assumptions” about local abruptly stopped. After two years people’s business skills and is being re- without fodder deliveries, LHDA staff evaluated. incorrectly informed the village that they would receive a large sum of money Communal compensation each year as compensation for their lost In addition to compensating individuals grazing land and that they should discuss for the loss of assets, LHDA promised to ways of using the money. Later, the compensate affected communities for the LHDA returned and informed them that loss of communal assets. This became the annual payments would in fact only quite problematic. The LHDA ended its be delivered when the LHDA approved deliveries of fodder in 1997, citing the community’s development plan. unfairness to affected people who did Several weeks later, the LHDA again not own stock but used grazing lands to visited the village and said that the gather vegetables and medicinal plants. compensation would in fact only be one

29 Replacing What Was Lost payment. Undaunted, the villagers affected people’s resentment towards the carefully devised plans for a community LHDA grew. The village has still not centre that would incorporate several received its promised compensation, and income-generating components. They as of February 2001, an LHDA staff submitted the proposal to LHDA and member had not officially visited the waited for a response. None came. They village for six months.29 visited LHDA repeatedly to ask about the status of their proposal and to ask the income generating officer to explain the procedures to their village. He did not accommodate the requests. The cause of the delay was that a method for assessing communities’ development plans had not yet been devised. As a result,

Letter sent to LHDA by villagers about lack of communal compensation.

11 September 1998

To: Mr. Makase Marumo, Chief Executive of the LHDA

Dear Sir:

We, as residents of Katse Local Catchment, have been stripped of the lands where our animals used to graze by the construction and filling of Katse Dam. In order to mitigate this loss, the project compensated us with fodder for the past five years.

We are now very surprised because just before the end of last year we were told by the project that we would be given money instead of fodder. Some of us began developing plans for how to use these funds. Unfortunately, we have not yet received any of this money, and it is now the end of 1998.

Mr. Marumo, our cattle are dying. Our oxen are becoming too weak to plough and sow the fields. Now we say the project should give us our fodder without any delay or unconditionally give us our lump sum payments within the coming month.

We thank you for your attention to this matter and we await your prompt action on it.

Sincerely,

[Signed by close to 100 villagers]

30 Replacing What Was Lost

Compensation for sharecroppers much as 10-25 bags per year. The buyers As mentioned in the previous section, also pay the growers a significant sum to the LHWP presented severe difficulties transport the marijuana to remote to sharecroppers. The new compensation collection sites.34 LHDA’s compensation policy overlooked the thousands of rates for arable land rarely cover more landless people (3200 people at Katse than a fraction of what affected people alone - 16 percent of the area’s once derived in marijuana income. population30) who subsisted on food and income derived from working in other Compensation for gardens people’s fields. Many owners of small Another contentious issue concerned plots of land also sharecropped to garden land. Many affected people grew supplement their income. One man, later vegetables in plots of land that ap- displaced by Mohale Dam said: “I have proached the size of some fields. The one field of my own, but then, truly I compensation rate for a hectare of usually plough in partnerships. Right garden land is about 20 times as much as here with the old people here, or with the rate for a hectare of arable land. people who do not have cattle, or those Fearing to set a precedent which could who are needy in the hands like the call the compensation policy’s land handicapped.”31 These sharecroppers valuation into question, LHDA officials lost their means of livelihood when the arbitrarily decided that no piece of land LHWP’s dams flooded their patrons’ which measured more than 400 m2 fields. The landholder received would be classified as a garden and compensation for the lost land, and the would therefore receive the arable land sharecroppers, their services no longer compensation rate. Affected people and needed, received nothing. Consultants NGOs like TRC and HCAG complained who revised the compensation policy in about the capricious decision, but to no 1996 noted that “the prospects for land- avail. poor families under LHDA’s existing compensation policy are not good,”32 but Garden compensation was also the final policy did not include a formal problematic for resettled people. The mechanism for compensating these first stage of resettlement out of Mohale households. The policy judges catchment involved 99 households and sharecroppers as not having land, when took place in 1998. They did not receive in fact they did have access to land. compensation for their gardens until the Access to land is not compensated by the early months of 2000. This was in direct policy. contravention of the World Bank’s policy on involuntary resettlement, Marijuana income which requires that displaced people “be Increases in compensation rates were, in compensated for their losses at full part, an attempt to reflect the economic replacement cost prior to the actual value of marijuana to project-affected move.”35 people.33 Unfortunately, they fall far short of compensating full value. A bag Complaint culture of marijuana can fetch $100 from South LHDA announced in 2001 that they African buyers, and farmers in the would review the policy in order to Mohale area commonly produce as address some of its weaknesses.36 It is

31 Replacing What Was Lost clear from recent statements, however, However, there may also be an element that the compensation program is of strategy in all of this talk about a becoming tiresome for LHDA. Project “complaint culture.” If it can be officials frequently lament the demonstrated that affected people simply “complaint culture” they feel is refused to take advantage of the developing among affected people. opportunities that were presented to “People have learned to simply complain them, then LHDA can make the case that and complain and complain and they do they did everything possible to “enable” not even have an interest in starting affected people to improve their quality projects that could improve their of life, thus fulfilling the requirements of standard of life,” said one.37 LHDA’s the treaty and the promises of the Compensation Division recently drafted politicians. a paper entitled, “Beyond the Compensation Boom: A Conceptual The next section will take a closer look Framework for Implementation of at many of these new development Development Interventions in the “opportunities,” demonstrating that the LHWP-affected Communities.” The barriers to their success stem less from document makes very clear that LHDA the lethargy of affected people, and more believes “affected households have from the harsh social and economic begun to exhibit sustained symptoms of realities of the Lesotho highlands. a dependency and complaints culture which weaken the ability of the LHDA 1 Panos Institute, Interview with Sebili Tau, November 1997, p. 7. to focus on broad-based sustainable 2 LHDA, An Overview of the Lesotho Highlands development initiatives to enhance Water Project, August 1996, p. 26. quality of life for impacted 3 LHDA, Compensation Policy, Rates and 38 Procedures, November 1997, pp. 1-5. communities.” World Bank staff echo 4 LHDA, An Overview of the Lesotho Highlands this opinion. “People have become Water Project, August 1996, p. 26. dependent on LHDA. The problem is 5 R.T Mochebelele and O.M. Letsela, Lesotho Highlands Water Project – Concerns and Benefits of how to get them out of the project- Dams Including the Environmental and Social Impacts affected people category so they stop and the Associated Mitigation Measures for Sustainability, December 1999, p. 25. acting like project-affected people and 6 just become citizens,” said one Bank Scott Coverdale and Lori Pottinger, From Here to 39 Eternity: Promises Versus Reality on the Lesotho staff worker. Highlands Water Project, International Rivers Network, August 28, 1996, p. 2. 7 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, and Thayer Scudder, Comments like these place the blame for Report of the 1991 Environmental Panel, August 19, failed mitigation and development 1991, p. 16. programs on the “laziness” or “apathy” 8 Lori Pottinger, Lesotho Highlands Trip Report, International Rivers Network, September 1996, p. 5 of affected people. Project proponents’ and Transformation Resource Centre, “How the missionary-like zeal for development LHWP Has Changed the Way My Family Lives,” blinded them to their own responsibility Work for Justice, Nov/Dec 1999, p. 3. 9 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study, in the impoverishment of affected Volume 2, Task 2, February 1996, p. 12. people. They shake their heads in 10 World Bank, LHWP: Back to Office Report, August exasperation, hardly remembering that it 1995, p. 3. 11 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael was the LHWP itself that left affected Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report 11 of the Panel of people bereft of land and resources. Environmental Experts, July 1997, p. 74. 12 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study, Volume 2, Task 2, February 1996, p. 57.

32 Replacing What Was Lost

13 Robert Archer, Trust in Construction, Christian Aid, 1995, p. 28. 14 Anna Moepi, The Impact of the LHWP on the Community Resettled from Molikaliko, December 1999, p. 1. 15 Panos Institute, Interview with Chief Mepa Mokhothu, November 1997, p. 5-6. 16 Laurent Laniel, Cannabis in Lesotho: A Preliminary Survey. 1998. 17 Olivia Bennett, “Tearing the Threads: The Social Costs of Forced Resettlement.” Oral History, Spring 1999, p. 43. 18 Panos Institute, Interview notes, 1998. 19 Panos Institute, Interview with Sebili Tau. November 1997, p. 5. 20 Benedict Leuta, pers. comm., April 1999. 21 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With The Old,” Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. 22 Len Lerer, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, March 1998, p. 15. 23 Robert Hitchccok, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, November 2000, p. 15. 24 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 30. 25 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, November 2000, p. 15. 26 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., February 7, 2001. 27 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, October 1999, p. 11. 28 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 2. 29 Pers. comm., February 2001. 30 M. Tshabalala and S.D. Turner, 1988 Socio- Economic Census of the LHWP Phase 1A Areas, LHDA, September 1989, p. 30. 31 Panos Institute, Interview with Sebili Tau, November 1997, p. 4. 32 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 2 Report, Volume 2 – Main Report, February 1996, p. 6. 33 LHWP consultants who were responsible for formulating the new compensation policy used the euphemism “cash crops” to refer to marijuana. 34 Laurent Laniel, Cannabis in Lesotho, 1998. 35 World Bank, Operational Directive 4.30: Involuntary Resettlement, June 1990, p. 1. 36 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With The Old,” Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. 37 Pers. comm., March 2000. 38 LHDA, Beyond the Compensation Boom: A Conceptual Framework for Implementation of Development Interventions in the LHWP-affected Communities, October 2000. 39 Pers. comm., December 2000.

Back to the Drawing Board: Experiments in Rural Development

In conjunction with the Compensation it was still quite a large sum relative to Plan, the LHDA unveiled a Rural other large dam projects around the Development Plan (RDP) in 1990 that world. outlined specific strategies to assist project-affected people restore their The Rural Development Plan had serious livelihoods. Required by the World troubles apart from budget issues, which Bank, such development plans are seemed immune to attempts to remedy intended to restructure the disrupted them. Parts of the plan were ill regional economies that big projects conceived, and implementation ran into leave in their wake. Academics and a series of snags. These troubles government officials lauded LHDA’s prompted the World Bank’s Panel of plan, describing it as “outstanding”1 and Environmental Experts to warn as early one of the best in Africa. This response as 1991 that it was “not confident that was not unanimous, however. One NGO implementation of the RDP will actually representative working with project- enable a majority of the mountain people affected people remarked, “It is ironic to significantly improve their living that there needs to be a development standards.”5 In 1994, World Bank staff program to repair the damage done by a noted that it was “hard to detect any development project.”2 economical effects” of the RDP.6 Few affected people participated in the The plan originally budgeted $54 million program’s activities, and its successes over 12 years for a wide range of tended to be overblown by LHDA. development projects including animal According to NGO representatives, “in husbandry and range management, one village where a dairy program is mountain horticulture and field crops, purported to have taken off, there are community forestry, commercial trout just seven cows, and villagers were told rearing, rural training, rural feeder roads, they will have to pay back LHDA for the tourism, village water supply, rural animals. Another village was shown an sanitation, and rural electrification.3 The RDP brochure, explaining livelihoods program was supposed to begin in 1990. they might choose from. Later, another Unfortunately, the South African and LHDA staff person told them they would Lesotho governments haggled over be given nothing shown in the book, but which country should foot the bill until would only be given loans to get started 1993, when they finally agreed to divide in the livelihoods depicted, which would the costs evenly and pay approximately have to be paid back with interest. $18m each over a ten-year period. South Confusion and resentment were widely Africa’s overwhelming political expressed.”7 By 1995 (the fifth year of advantage in these negotiations the program), the World Bank was prevented Lesotho from insisting that the calling the RDP the “sick man” of the development budget was actually a entire operation.8 In 1996, it noted that compensation cost. The $18m budget the program had spent only 18 percent of was far less than the amount project its total budget9 and told the LHDA to consultants had originally proposed,4 but “fully re-allocate the RDP fund” because

34 Back to the Drawing Board

“very little has been committed.”10 In taps constructed below the national essence, they had told LHDA to start all standard and sourced to weak, over. intermittent springs.14 In 1996, the village of Makhangoa was resettled from Ten years after LHDA devised the RDP, Katse Dam to an area without a clean it is generally considered to have failed water source. During the dry season, the in meeting its objectives.11 The Bokong River below the village is little following are specific examples of more than a string of stagnant pools. programs gone awry. Cows, donkeys, sheep and goats drink from them and crisscross them fre- Water Supply quently in search of better grazing. This The RDP made a commitment to “assure is where the resettled people were forced that all 3,770 households within the local to collect water. In 1996, LHDA told the catchments of Katse and ‘Muela villagers not to worry because they reservoirs have access to engineered would construct a water supply system. drinking water from public standpipes No system has been installed to date. by the year 1995.”12 They further committed that all households would A high-ranking LHDA official who have access to standpipes “within 150 spoke under condition of anonymity meters” and would be provided with 30 explained the project’s broken promise liters/person/day, 20 liters/person/day quite candidly: “We made major less than the international standard commitments without intensive advocated by the World Health assessment of the real water situation in Organization. At the time, they the catchment area.” Pumping water estimated that this commitment would from the reservoir is apparently not a cost $715,000 for construction and 50 solution, because “the depth of years of maintenance. (reservoir) drawdown makes pumping impracticable.”15 Curiously, this was not Five years after the target date, only enough of an obstacle to prevent the three villages have working water Katse engineers’ village from pumping systems and at least five primary schools reservoir water into their homes, still have no water supply.13 Many of the restaurants, and swimming pools. systems that were installed quickly failed and have not supplied water in Range Management almost three years. LHDA claimed that The RDP’s experts on range manage- the systems had been vandalized by ment and animal husbandry concluded herdboys, and placed the blame on that pastures in LHWP catchment areas affected people. One official explained, exhibited “a most severe state of over- “The people think that LHDA should be stocking”16 and noted that the formation responsible for the maintenance of those of Katse Reservoir would exacerbate the standpipes, but if the people themselves situation. Overstressed pastures lead to don’t demonstrate any initiative, the poor quality livestock and increased system will never be sustainable.” sedimentation of LHWP reservoirs. However, a government inspection team Accordingly, the consultants recom- reported seeing no evidence of mended that range management vandalism -- but did remark on finding associations be formed to undertake a

35 Back to the Drawing Board massive de-stocking exercise that would consultants’ livestock plan was doomed have slaughtered all livestock in the to failure despite its $10 million budget. catchment and replaced every three slaughtered animals with “two good Ten years later, not a single animal has animals of improved productive been culled as a part of the de-stocking capacity.”17 These range management exercise. Given the many decades of associations would then have exclusive agricultural extension agents urging grazing rights in certain fenced-off Basotho to decrease their herd sizes pastures and initiate a fodder production without success, it is amazing that program. LHWP consultants proposed culling at all. A short investigation would have To most highlands people, this proposal revealed views similar to those seemed absurd, and the de-stocking expressed by a Thaba Tseka District program in particular was pure madness. Agricultural Officer who said of Approximately 80 percent of households mandatory culling, “It is not a matter of affected by Katse and Muela owned education. There have been thousands of animals and almost half owned between pitsos. People understand perfectly well 1 and 10 head.18 A 33 percent cull would what the issues are, what needs to be impact these families severely. done – they just refuse to do it!”21 Livestock are essential in many aspects of mountain life – field cultivation, The effort to fence off certain pastures provision of wool and mohair, for exclusive access to members of transportation of people and other heavy Range Management Associations is not loads over difficult terrain, and for working well,22 and the fodder cultural celebrations and feasts. Most production program resulted only in importantly, large numbers of animals “some minor grass plantations” along are a valuable retirement plan or store of one short stretch of road.23 Many wealth that may be accessed only in villages declined to form grazing times of emergency. Suggesting that associations, and in villages where they Basotho cull their stock “is equivalent to were formed, many individuals refused asking a townsperson to withdraw to join.24 Affected people resent the savings from the bank and burn them.”19 fenced grazing areas because they have Large numbers of livestock also have a reduced the amount of communal range. social function. One of the most revered The cost to join the association is figures in Basotho culture is the morui, a prohibitively expensive. Members are farmer who is blessed with many cattle charged $5 per animal for three months who always has one to lend to his of grazing rights in the fenced pastures.25 neighbor for plowing or to give for slaughter at feasts or funerals. A man Horticulture with only a few, high-quality animals is LHDA consultants correctly recognized less likely to allow them to be used for the importance of agriculture as a the communal good whereas “respect is survival strategy for highlands due a man with livestock because households and proposed $1.6m worth livestock help the whole community.”20 of “improved cultural practices” that With this cultural rule in place, the they hoped would lead to higher yields and “attractive gross margins on

36 Back to the Drawing Board vegetables and fruit” with the additional use of inputs is high, the average benefit of reducing erosion into dam farmer’s yield was a $13 loss.29 reservoirs.26 The consultants believed Predictably (and wisely), few farmers the “stagnant” state of agriculture in pre- increased their use of inputs and the ones LHWP areas resulted from local who did struggled to avoid operating at a people’s “failure to innovate.”27 To loss. Nearly seven years after the project remedy this situation, LHWP determined began, only 3.3 percent of the 2,345 to introduce hybrid seeds, improved households which lost arable land to tilling techniques, fertilizers, pesticides, Katse and Muela had participated in soil conservation methods, and a pilot LHDA’s improved seed multiplication irrigation project. project,30 and the majority of these households could only participate A more accurate assessment of the state because fertilizers and pesticides were of highlands farming would have shown provided by the LHDA.31 that strain on natural resources, which would be exacerbated by the loss of land The horticultural program’s irrigation to LHWP dams, were some of the most project faced an even more dubious major constraints to improved yields. future. LHDA hoped its 2.1-hectare pilot Presently, dung that could be used to scheme at Sentelina would encourage fertilize fields must be gathered and local farmers to begin irrigating small burned because of a shortage in vegetable and tree plots to grow produce brushwood and trees. Additionally, crop for sale in the lowlands and South residue, which could be ploughed back Africa. The project document, however, into the soil, is gathered and used as was gloomy about irrigation’s potential: animal fodder to compensate for “Few, if any, irrigation schemes have degraded pastures. been successful in Lesotho, even when established on the best lowlands, within Predictably, like so many past easy reach of markets and with adequate agriculture projects in Lesotho, the water supplies.”32 It even admitted, “The RDP’s program failed to make much of project is not justified economically… an impact. Hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides are expensive, and the costs of However, given LHDA’s obligation to these measures (while perhaps develop the area by the opening of new increasing yields in some instances) opportunities to its inhabitants, the proj- made farming a losing proposition. ect includes irrigated horticulture. Its While highlands farmers’ yields are implementation, however, can only pro- relatively low, their expenses are even ceed in the knowledge that it has a high lower because they use very few inputs. risk of failure.”33 True to their doubts, Before LHDA moved into the area, only only 62 households had participated in 0.2 percent of fields near Katse Dam irrigation schemes by 1996,34 and many were fertilized, and only 8.1 percent of these were involved in the heavily were sown with purchased seed.28 subsidized Sentelina pilot project. Small Because of the low inputs, farmers’ markets, high electric bills, and a lack of profits in the area average nearly $30 storage and processing facilities meant annually. This appears to be a small that the project could not achieve amount, but in the lowlands, where the financial viability.35

37 Back to the Drawing Board

Rural Training henceforth be conducted in affected Contrary to project officials recent claim villages rather than off-site.39 that LHDA has “equipped (affected Representatives of the Transformation people) with the necessary skills to start Resource Centre (TRC) believed this their own enterprises in the rural move to be “long overdue” and noted villages” and that skills training that, “the (Centre) has just been a money “qualifies them for employment making play for foreign consultants who opportunities in the project’s construc- kept on proposing their continued tion sites,”36 rural training programs for presence.” However, TRC staff noted affected people have failed. The with concern that all of the Rural LHDA’s Rural Development Centre in Development Centre staff had been the Katse area was intended to train retrenched, hinting that the village- seriously affected people in skills such centered approach required an accom- as woodworking, sewing, masonry, and panying reinforcement of the skills poultry-raising. These areas offer, at training role of LHDA Field Operations best, limited opportunities for Branches. The success rate of Field entrepreneurship. In 1998, the Lesotho Operation Branch Income Generation NGO Highlands Church Action Group officers working in affected villages at conducted a study of 23 Rural Develop- Katse inspired little confidence. ment Centre training recipients from randomly selected villages around Katse The abandoned Rural Development Dam. The study found that only two of Centre workshops, offices, dormitories, them had been able to generate any sort and living quarters are less than a mile of income with their new skills, and away from another notorious failed none were able to use their skills to development program: the Thaba-Tseka establish a new livelihood. They also Project. James Ferguson, author of The reported that their training certificates Anti-Politics Machine, chronicles the failed to “open doors” with LHWP troubled history of this project, paying contractors, who claim the certificates special attention to the fact that, while are of low standard. “I took my training the methods and means to achieve certificate to the LHWP three times, and “development” are reviewed and each time they told me it is better for me reworked constantly, the belief in the to throw my certificate away,” reported possibility of “development” is rarely one.37 Other training recipients questioned. repeatedly identified two impediments to putting their new skills to use: access to Feeder Roads capital and the lack of a market for their LHDA undertook to build 53km worth goods and services. One of LHDA’s of feeder roads around Katse Dam in rural training staff admitted privately order “to redress decline consequent on that economic realities in the highlands isolation, and to stimulate development.” meant the odds of a majority of affected 40 LHDA assumed the roads would allow people restoring their livelihoods was people access to new markets and “virtually nil.”38 services and stimulate tourism. Affected In January 2001, LHDA announced that people were skeptical, but welcomed the the Rural Development Centre would be program because of the opportunity of closed, and that skills training would securing short-term employment. A

38 Back to the Drawing Board

1993 study of 28 villages along proposed found that villages located far from LHWP feeder roads at Katse Dam found roads produced the most food while “that employment from road villages along the main mountain road construction was considered more “have generally done quite poorly.”43 valuable than any of the other benefits The feeder roads had similar effects to that the roads would bring to the area. those described by Ferguson after the The people we interviewed saw the construction of the main through- proposed access by vehicle as going to mountain road 15 years earlier: “The benefit outsiders who have vehicles who road did indeed reduce ‘farm to market’ would bring their taxis and make shops, transportation costs, but it soon became as well as employees of the Highlands clear that, in the ‘farm to market’ Water Project, rather than the local scheme, the ‘isolated’ mountain villages people.”41 They were correct. were not the farm but the market. With the new road, imported South African Ironically, the isolation of the area may goods could be brought in more cheaply have been the only factor that kept the than ever, and the grain-laden trucks of local economy afloat. LHWP access the planners’ dreams ended up coming roads encouraged the spread of South up the mountain road, not down it… African products. Because South African Instead of providing a channel for the goods are cheap, of relatively high export of agricultural surpluses, the new quality, and have a certain amount of road only lowered the price of cheap prestige, they stifled the marketing of imported food, making it harder than local commodities. Shops in the most ever for a local farmer to profitably remote villages surrounding LHWP produce for the market.”44 dams are now stocked almost exclusively with South African goods. Area Infrastructure In several villages adjacent to dam labor In the formerly isolated LHWP areas, camps, LHDA built community halls, where local producers’ only competitive marketplaces, communal latrines and advantage was their vicinity to their village offices to offset the social customers, the roads allowed distant disruption caused by the influx of competitors to corner the market. outside workers. The community halls Farmers who managed to find buyers for remain locked and little used in most their crops previously could no longer do villages. They do, however, receive lots so because imported products were often of abuse. The doors of some have been cheaper. One farmer interviewed by the stolen, windows have been broken, and Panel of Experts managed to compete in at least one case, have been used as for several years, but in 2000 “previous toilets. The village offices are also markets have ceased to be available. scarcely used. Both the halls and the Fifty bags of potatoes remain unsold offices are less communal goods than because a verbal commitment was not prizes for powerful individuals within honored, while an entire planting of the community to fight over. A carrots and of early maturing cabbage politically partisan school principal has gone to waste because of failure to assumed exclusive rights of one find a market.”42 In a 1995 survey of community hall and uses it as a venue villages in the Mohale area, researchers for speeches of ruling party politicians.

39 Back to the Drawing Board

In another village, a chief has rented out electricity consumers in Lesotho is the offices as living space. known to be over $400, the proportion of any community in the mountains likely The markets, an attempt to boost to use electricity, in the absence of a informal trade, had mixed results. Two large subsidy, will be low.”47 of the five structures are unused. In the Undeterred, they suggested that a few other three, women sell snacks to taxi households were spending more on passengers travelling to and from the wood fuel than they would spend on lowlands. The communal latrines, far electricity costs and thus were potential from contributing to village sanitation, customers. Unfortunately for the project, are in fact a serious health hazard. Many the average affected household spent of the latrines have been wisely locked. only $2 per month on fuel, far less than The others are filthy. Neither the villages the $12.29 per month that they would nor LHDA feel it is their responsibility need to pay for electricity and to clean them. appliances.48

Rural Electrification The consultants concluded that rural RDP consultants budgeted $1m to electrification could take place only complete a rural electrification program under the following circumstances: 1) if for 10 villages near Katse and Muela low-voltage distribution lines to the Dam. In brief, the plan was for LHDA to villages were grant-funded; 2) if the bear the cost of installing transmission LEC changed its tariff structure to allow lines in the selected villages and then for load-limited, flat-rate usage; 3) if a have interested households pay for credit facility was put in place to help connecting their homes to the grid. The consumers pay for connection fees and project was to be completed by 1995. new appliances; and 4) if, in the interest of cost-efficiency, each participating It appears that project authorities never household installed an expensive “heat had any intention of following through storage cooker” (a pilot project to test on this part of the plan. The economic the cooker estimated the cost at $400 per realities in the target villages clearly unit). Unfortunately, the low density of indicated that the project would not be the villages and the even lower density feasible, and the Lesotho Electrical of people able to pay for the scheme Corporation (LEC) felt that investments increased connection costs prohibitively. in rural electrification represented “a The LEC had just cancelled its load-limit misallocation of scarce financial tariff scale in an effort to boost profits. resource(s).”45 At the time the plan was The credit facility never materialized. In devised, the average monthly income for addition, the unfamiliar “heat storage households in the project areas was cookers” were not popular with the approximately $65, and only 7.3 percent highlands communities. The World of the households made over $200 per Bank recognized the futility of the month.46 The average monthly income of program, declaring, “The fact is that LEC customers at the time was more even if transmission lines were available, than twice that amount. In the project most people wouldn’t be able to afford document, the consultants concede that to pay for the connection.”49 “given the monthly income of most

40 Back to the Drawing Board

Nevertheless, LHDA adopted the plan inadequate primary production to and in 1998 attempted to implement it in support natural feed production for even the village of Ha Kennan on the banks of extensive, let alone intensive, trout Katse Reservoir. At great cost, project rearing in Katse. So added feeds would workers erected utility poles and strung need to be used. But the conditions transmission lines over rough terrain to a around the farm would deteriorate and transformer on the outskirts of the become suitable for closed-cycle village. That is where the project ended. transmission of all sorts of fish LHDA officials told the village residents pathogens and parasites.”53 that they must now “take the initiative” and ask the LEC to connect them to the Tourism was another pipe dream. Few transformer. They told the village that tourists visit Katse Dam, and those who each participating household would bear do spend little time there. The RDP’s the costs of new appliances, the con- authors optimistically predicted that the necting fee, and additional $2,000 utility Katse Information Center would attract poles.50 Not surprisingly, the transformer 10,000 visitors annually,54 but in 1999, stands unused amidst a sparse collection only 1,570 foreigners made the trip, and of thatched mud and stone huts while a significant percentage of those were villagers continue to gather brushwood residing in Lesotho or visiting for and dung to fuel their fires. business reasons.55 Plans for picnic sites, a recreation center, hiking trails, and a Project authorities admitted in December ski slope never materialized. The World 1999 that the “rural electrification Bank’s Panel of Experts expressed program has not yet been skepticism at the LHWP’s tourism implemented.”51 Nor will it ever be, potential, remarking, “Zonation, tenure, barring an extraordinarily expensive, rights (including community rights), donor-funded electricity program. Now, incentives, legislation, licenses, safety, eleven years after the pledge was made, attitudes, facilities, business affected people’s hopes of electricity opportunities and many other things have dimmed. have to be in place before tourism will provide any meaningful revenues.”56 Other programs Other RDP projects also failed. The trout Practice Makes Perfect? farms were a non-starter for a number of New and Improved RDP for Mohale reasons – the contract to train The Rural Development Program subsistence fishers was not finalized experience was a bitter one for the until late 1999, and there is no credit LHDA and its donors. Complaints and program in place to help fishers obtain pressure from affected people and NGOs the necessary capital.52 Even without about the inadequate compensation these constraints, though, any sort of policy and failing development schemes fishing will be quite limited at Katse mounted to crisis proportions. The given its great depth, low temperatures, problems even threatened World Bank and lack of nutrients. One ecologist funding for the next phase of the familiar with Katse reservoir remarked, project.57 Therefore, when construction “To put the matter bluntly, as far as fish began at Mohale Dam, the production is concerned, there is Environmental Impact Assessment

41 Back to the Drawing Board included an entire section on “lessons RDAP’s development plans called for learned” from the Katse experience and approximately $13 million over a six promised that similar mistakes would year period, much less than the 1990 not happen again. The report states that: RDP budget of $36m over ten years. 1) the dam “introduced a number of So far, the problematic design and social evils into the local community,” sluggish implementation of Katse Dam’s 2) “compensation has been handled in a RDP has been replicated by the RDAP.60 bureaucratic, slow and rigid manner,” In 1999, the World Bank’s Panel of and 3) the RDP “has been slow to show Experts noted with alarm that “emphasis any meaningful progress.”58 The report on physical removal and compensation then provides a set of “optimum” activities continued to take precedence solutions to address these issues, over development activities,” and “only including assurances that the LHDA 1) a small minority of households” had has now improved the relationship been involved in development programs between its engineering and a full year after they had been resettled environmental and social divisions; 2) from Mohale.61 The next year, they said has introduced a “flexible” that LHDA’s “Development Section is compensation policy; and 3) consults the weakest within (LHDA’s) regularly with affected people and Environmental and Social Services NGOs. Group” and that “the speed with which income generation projects are being The “optimum solutions” for the implemented continues to be an area of LHWP’s social and environmental woes concern.”62 The following is a were presented in the 1997 Resettlement description of some of the projects & Development Action Plan (RDAP). contained in the program. This plan is comprised of tasks designed to mitigate the project’s negative Crops and Livestock impacts and to “enhance specific LHDA designated almost 40 percent of resources and resource uses”59 for the the RDAP’s development budget benefit of project-affected people. (approximately $5 million) to a “Crop Among the RDAP’s commitments are and Livestock Production” program that the provision of water to all villages in resolved to “provide average the project area; the establishment of household’s food requirements plus three “Rural Development Centers” to extra for cash sales.”63 Unfortunately, train project-affected people; the the program’s plans continued to development of a credit facility to prescribe interventions that failed to promote entrepreneurship; new crop, produce significant results at Phase 1A. livestock production, fishery, and For example, LHDA proposed that area forestry programs; and the provision of farmers increase their crop inputs and health centers and mobile clinics. The reserve 10 percent of their land for plan also budgeted $900,000 for potato production. 64 As described monitoring and evaluation of the effects earlier, hybrid seeds and other inputs of Mohale Dam construction on local make farming in Lesotho a losing communities, which included a proposition. Potato production requires commitment to train the communities to very expensive inputs and is highly labor assess their own situation. All told, the intensive. It remains to be seen whether

42 Back to the Drawing Board farmers who adopt the consultant’s that operates near the Maseru proposals will remain profitable. resettlement site. Local NGOs are skeptical, though, because the Project officials also introduced paprika cooperative charges a high joining fee. as a new cash crop. Unfortunately, they Many poultry programs operate at a loss introduced it “on the basis of verbal in Lesotho. The costs of feed outweigh interest of one entrepreneur in South the profits from egg sales. Africa”65 without properly training Dairy projects are even riskier people how to store and market it. The investments. The major problem is farmers were left with huge amounts of finding a market and a way to transport paprika peppers, a crop not used in the milk to that market. A pilot dairy Lesotho, without guaranteed buyers. project at Muela could not solve this Highlands farmers cannot afford to raise problem, and it has failed to make a unwanted paprika peppers in fields that serious contribution to livelihood could produce maize, which would feed restoration to this day. 69 If a household their families. decides to invest in a dairy cow, they must build a stable or small barn in order The RDAP’s Livestock Production to reduce the risk of theft (a serious program hinges on affected households problem in the Highlands). The cows making “a conscious decision” to make a must be kept at the homestead year “modest” investment in poultry units round in order to allow households to ranging from 12 to 200 birds or dairy collect milk. This puts additional strain units comprised of one dairy cow.66 on already overstressed pastures near the While the program is well-intentioned, villages. Therefore, most households the risk of failure is too high for all but have no other option than to purchase the wealthiest of households. The project fodder for the animal. Only the document claims that small poultry units wealthiest families can buy enough “should supply the household with eggs fodder to keep the cow from becoming and have a surplus for sale, the proceeds emaciated. At the Muela pilot project, of which could be used to purchase numerous cows died from hunger.70 feed.”67 In an ideal world, households Thus far, the dairy program is would be able to pay for the feed, nonexistent at Mohale.71 chicken houses, vaccinations against avian influenza, and still sell enough Tourism eggs to pay off their investment. (Many The consultants’ overly optimistic ideas households do not clearly understand for “eco-tourism” on the banks of that their debt will eventually need to be Mohale reservoir would be laughable if repaid.) The system only works for a few they did not cost hundreds of thousands families, though, before the local market of dollars to contrive. Confident that experiences an egg glut. Thus far, only “tourism will be an important generator two households in the Makotoko of local employment within the project resettlement community have attempted watershed,” the RDAP budgeted almost to invest in poultry production.68 The $1.5 million to promote the Panel of Experts believes that some establishment of adventure resorts and resettled people may be able to take lodges throughout the catchment.72 The advantage of a local poultry cooperative largest of the lodges is proposed to

43 Back to the Drawing Board accommodate 250 visitors, and is to financial institutions and after promising offer activities like scuba diving(!), credit to a group of affected people.74 boardsailing, hot-air ballooning, The lack of such a facility contributed to mountaineering, and pony trekking. affected people’s continuing dependence Promoting eco-tourism at an unnatural on compensation payments. Training lake which dispossessed thousands of programs for village leaders concerning their livelihoods and left downstream the design of development plans also fell river reaches with a fraction of their severely behind schedule in part because normal flow rate is unseemly, and the of a lack of funding.75 Promises to build short-sightedness of promoting extra classroom space and community ballooning in a heavily mountainous facilities (such as those constructed at area with high winds and few roads is Katse) have gone unfulfilled to date. unbelievable. A recent video The RDAP’s training programs, like commissioned by the LHDA and the those of the RDC before it, have not Lesotho Tourist Board promoted the produced much in the way of ridiculous notion of a “magnificent 18 entrepreneurship or other income hole golf course in spectacular settings” generating activities.76 “Development around Mohale Dam.73 The construction Teams” were to help affected of such a facility would involve communities set up small businesses, but enormous cost and would appropriate the teams have yet to materialize.77 In further tracts of land, increasing stress fairness, it is still relatively early in the on already over-stretched resources. project cycle, but most of these programs were slated to be fully Similar developments to these had implemented by 2003. previously been planned at Katse with nothing to show to date. It is not likely One of the most troubling indicators of that tourism entrepreneurs will be able to the RDAP’s ineffectiveness is that water attract enough visitors to make two supply systems have still not been separate, but almost identical, sites installed at some of the Mohale profitable. This will be next to impos- resettlement sites. People who were sible in a country with little tourist resettled to the foothill village of infrastructure in a region where relative- Makotoko still do not have the promised ly more spectacular and established water taps on their plots, so they must holiday destinations abound. Perhaps collect water from distant streams. The LHDA has given up on promoting contract to construct the taps is currently tourism at Katse, in which case, few mired in a convoluted bureaucratic ideas remain as to how to restore the approval process. LHDA also failed to livelihoods of people living there. install water taps in the urban resettlement site of Makhoakhoeng (near Other Programs Maseru) for over a year. During that LHDA was slow to release funding for time, the resettlers collected water from other Mohale development programs, large tanks that LHDA periodically too. LHDA failed to establish a credit delivered to the site. Maseru’s Water and facility for affected people despite Sewerage Authority (WASA) connected having conducted several years of the village to its distribution network in negotiations between the project and 1999. This became an unexpected

44 Back to the Drawing Board hardship. For several months after one has ever tried such ‘development’ WASA installed the taps, the people of before.”86 Therefore, decision-makers Makhoakhoeng were not billed for the who propose more dams in Lesotho must service. Then, in late 1999, they received acknowledge to the public and affected bills for their water usage that month and communities that they will inevitably for the previously unpaid months. Some leave many destitute. Development of these bills were for $30-$6078 – a programs for displaced people, no matter huge cost for resettled households who how well intentioned or funded, may collected free water before resettlement. appease the consciences of project Some households receive only $130/year officials and funders, but will not satisfy in compensation.79 The average monthly the hunger of the dispossessed. water bill is approximately $7. “LHDA said we have to bear the cost of the 1 Ben Molapo and Terry Jantzi, “Waiting for Water Royalties,” Africa South & East, Jan/Feb 1993, p. 33. water,” said one resettler, “but we don’t 2 80 Terry Jantzi, The Highlands Water Scheme, August have money.” Over 100 more 29, 1990. households (approximately 550 people) 3 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 1 Summary, July 1990. will be forced to relocate to sites without 4 81 Robert Archer, The LHWP: Visit by Robert Archer, water supply systems in 2001. Christian Aid, January 10-21, 1994, p. 4. 5 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, and Thayer Scudder, LHDA Report of the 1991 Environmental Panel, LHDA has also not fulfilled its August 1991, p. 10. commitment to supply drinking water to 6 World Bank, LHWP Back to the Office Report, the villages surrounding the Mohale December 7, 1994. 7 Scott Coverdale and Lori Pottinger, From Here to reservoir, a project LHDA claimed it Eternity: Promises Versus Reality on the Lesotho would complete this project by Highlands Water Project, August 28, 1996, p. 7. December 2000.82 8 World Bank, Lesotho: Highlands Water Project Supervision Mission, October 4-18, 1995, p. 2. 9 World Bank, Lesotho: Highlands Water Project The LHDA declares that the RDAP’s Aide Memoire and Next Mission, June 4, 1996, p. 8. 10 Ibid., annex 16, p. 2. “ultimate goal is for communities to take 11 direct responsibility for the development Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, 83 and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of process.” This is no simple task. Environmental Experts, November 2000, p. 6. Affected communities have been and 12 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 1 Summary, July 1990, p. 5. continue to be much more concerned 13 Schoolchildren at Khohlontso Primary School draw with compensation than development. water from an unprotected spring beside a road While this may be a frustration to LHDA culvert. 84 14 Transformation Resource Centre, “Water, Water and World Bank staff, it is the natural Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink,” Work for response to dispossession, especially Justice, Nov/Dec 1999, No. 53, p. 6. among poor, risk-averse communities. 15 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 3 Mountain Horticulture and Field Crops, July 1990, p. 41. Even without affected communities’ 16 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume resistance, though, the prospects for 2 Animal Husbandry and Range Management, July 1990, p. 12. restoring livelihoods in project areas 17 Ibid., p. 41. through rural development programs are 18 M. Tshabalala and S.D. Turner, 1988 Socio- bleak. Programs such as those described Economic Census of the LHWP Phase 1A Areas: Volume 1, Main Report, September 1989, p. 43. in the RDAP have failed repeatedly in 19 85 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Lesotho. As Ferguson noted in 1990, Mentis and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of “if Lesotho is poor it is not because no Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 24.

45 Back to the Drawing Board

20 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: LHWP, National University of Lesotho, 1991, pp. 16- “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic 17. Power in Lesotho, University of Minnesota Press, 46 Bureau of Statistics, Income, Expenditure and 1994, p. 153. Consumption of Basotho Households, October 1988. 21 Ibid., p. 183. 47 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 22 Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the 8 Village Infrastructure, July 1990, p. 7. LHWP Phase 1A Area: 1999 Monitoring Report, 48 Ibid., p. 21. January 2000, p. 16. 49 World Bank, LHWP: Back to the Office Report, 23 World Bank, Lesotho: LHWP Back to Office Report, April 4, 1994, annex 5, p. 11. April 4, 1994, annex 5, p. 8. 50 LHDA official, pers. comm., 1998. 24 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 51 R.T. Mochebelele and O.M. Letsela, Lesotho 2 Main Report, Vol. 2, February 1996, p. 12. Highlands Water Project: Concerns and Benefits of 25 Afridev Consultants, Biological Monitoring in the Dams Including the Environmental and Social Impacts LHWP Phase 1A Area: 1999 Monitoring Report, and the Associated Mitigation Measures for January 2000, app. 2, p. 7. Sustainability, Paper presented to the World 26 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task Commission on Dams Regional Consultation, Cairo, 2 Main Report, Vol. 2, February 1996, p. 6. Egypt, December 8-9, 1999, p. 15. 27 Ibid., p. 2. 52 John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, 28 Ibid., p. 18. Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, April 29 John Gay and David Hall, Poverty and Livelihoods 2000, pp. 8, 43. in Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, 53 Doug Cross, pers. comm., June 30, 2001. Sechaba Consultants, June 2000, p. 85. 54 LHDA, Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 30 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael 7 Area Infrastructure, July 1990, p. 15. Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 55 John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 2. Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, April 31 World Bank, Lesotho: LHWP Back to Office Report, 2000, p. 8. April 4, 1994, annex 5, p. 8. 56 Ibid., p. 44. 32 LHDA, Rural Development Plan, Vol. 3, 1990, p. 57 World Bank, Supervision Mission – October 4-18, 59. 1995, Aide Memoire, January 19, 1996, p. 2. 33 Ibid., p. 6. 58 Ibid., Chapter 2, p. 11. 34 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael 59 LHDA, Draft Environmental Action Plan, May Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of 1997, p. viii. Environmental Experts, June 1996, p. 2. 60 LHDA, Resettlement and Development 35 World Bank, World Bank Supervision Mission , Implementation Programme: Final Report and Stage Aide Memoire, November 1996, p. 10. 1 Evaluation, June 1998, p. 3. 36 R.T. Mochebelele and O.M. Letsela, Lesotho 61 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael Highlands Water Project: Concerns and Benefits of Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Dams Including the Environmental and Social Impacts Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 6. and the Associated Mitigation Measures for 62 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, Sustainability, Paper presented to the World and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Commission on Dams Regional Consultation, Cairo, Environmental Experts, November 2000, pp. 18, 23. Egypt, December 8-9, 1999. 63 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Len Lerer, Michael 37 Highlands Church Action Group, Training Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Recipient Survey, 1998. Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 44. 38 LHDA staff, pers. comm. 64 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study, A 39 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With The Old,” Synopsis of Studies & Proposed Programmes, April Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. 1997, p. 23. 40 LHDA, Rural Development Plan, Volume 7: Area 65 John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Infrastructure, July 1990, p. 10. Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, April 41 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty in Lesotho, 1994, 2000, p. 32. June 1994, p. 130. 66 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study, 42 John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Synopsis of Studies and Proposed Programmes, p. 24. Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, April 67 Ibid., p. 25. 2000, p. 32. 68 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., 43 LHDA, Mohale Advanced Infrastructure: Draft February 8, 2001. Social & Environmental Impact Assessment Report, 69 World Bank, LHWP World Bank Supervision April 1995, p. 2-5. Mission – Aide Memoire, November 1996, Annex 3D, 44 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, p. 2. University of Minnesota Press, 1994, p. 230. 70 Ibid. and Highlands Church Action Group, pers. 45 Tumelo Tsikoane, The Contradictions of Project comm., February 8, 2001. Approach to National Development: The Case of

46 Back to the Drawing Board

71 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., February 8, 2001. 72 LHDA, Draft Environmental Action Plan, May 1997, p. 45. 73 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of Panel of Environmental Experts, March 1999, p. 8. 74 Ibid., p. 15. 75 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study, Executive Summary, Task 1, Vol. 1, November 1995, p. 18. 76 Robert Hitchcock, John Ledger, Michael Mentis, and Thayer Scudder, Report of the Panel of Environmental Experts, October 1999, p. 17. 77 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Implementation Programme: Final Report and Stage 1 Evaluation. June 1998, p. 5. 78 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., April 18, 2001. 79 Transformation Resource Centre, “Not Even a Place to Bury Our Dead,” Work for Justice, Nov/Dec 1999, No. 53, p. 8. 80 Anna Moepi, The Impact of the LHWP on the Community Resettled from Molikaliko, Paper presented to the World Commission on Dams Regional Consultation, Cairo, Egypt, December 8-9, 1999. 81 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., October 2, 2000. 82 Hunting-Consult 4 Joint Venture, LHDA Contract 1012 VO#5: Monthly Progress Report No. 2. May 1997, p. 4. 83 LHDA, Transformation Process of LHDA and Vision for Social and Environmental Issues, Presented at “Workshop on Socio-Economic Impacts of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project,” November 11-12, 1997, p. 2. 84 LHDA and World Bank staff frequently refer to a “complaint culture” among affected people that they see as becoming problematic to development efforts. One frustrated World Bank staff member claimed in a meeting with LHDA and local NGOs that if he had lost his land to the LHWP, he would have been able to re-establish his livelihood and turn a profit because of the numerous development opportunities now available in the area. 85 Among the rural development programs generally agreed to be failures are the Thaba Tseka Project (1975-84), the Hololo Valley Project (1983-88), the Lesotho Agricultural Production and Institutional Support Project (1986-91), and the Thaba Bosiu Project. 86 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, 1994, p. 37.

Selling the Dream: The Community Participation Strategy

“The custom of the tribe forbids the plans for compensation or resettlement. chief to do anything important, Community members complained: without assembling the people and “They come and take and destroy what- giving them the opportunity of ever they please, then they compensate expressing their opinion.”1 us in whatever way they please without Chief Moshoeshoe – Founder of Lesotho asking for our agreement. We see that they don’t care about us at all.”3

For obvious reasons, the dismal failure The LHDA enlisted the support of of development programs and the Lesotho’s security forces to cow those troubles with the compensation policy who were critical of the project. provoked a significant amount of According to one World Bank staff resentment towards the LHWP. Word of member, “the (LHDA) Public Relations the project’s negative social impacts in Officer brought police and military to the Katse area traveled quickly to (Ha Mentsel) and told them, in a public villages near the site of the proposed meeting, that they will not get any more Mohale Dam, and, while some people employment because they complain so welcomed the project and its promises of much.”4 Agents of Lesotho’s National development, others living there were Security Service (NSS) routinely openly hostile toward project officials attended community meetings when they first appeared in the mountain concerning the LHWP. The NSS was communities near Mohale in 1994. So, at implicated in numerous extra-judicial the World Bank’s urging, the LHDA killings in the late 1980s and early responded in March 1997 with a 1990s, and their silent presence at Community Participation Policy and community meetings was nothing less Strategy intended to increase affected than calculated intimidation. communities’ “buy in” to the project.

Granted, the early years of the LHWP The emphasis on community or may have been a less enlightened time. “stakeholder” participation had little More recently, “best practice” for large precedent in the LHWP’s history. When infrastructure projects has come to mean the LHWP was initiated in October aiming for a high degree of meaningful 1986, General Lekhanya’s military participation from sectors of society who council ruled Lesotho and brooked little will be most negatively impacted. dissent. Government censors designated 2 However, participation of affected the LHWP treaty “classified,” and people remained sorely limited when people living in the affected areas knew preparations for construction of Mohale next to nothing about the project until Dam commenced in 1994. Neither the representatives of the military council fact that Lesotho held democratic arrived in helicopters to inform them that elections nor that Nelson Mandela held the Government of Lesotho intended to the presidency in South Africa build a dam on their land. The officials significantly influenced the amount of told the people little about the probable community involvement. social impacts of the project or about

48 Selling the Dream

LHDA’s consultants did meet bargaining table for affected extensively with Mohale households to communities. LHDA and its consultants acquaint them to the many issues drew up the plan without serious input concerning resettlement. LHDA referred from affected people or civil society. As to this process as “consultation,” but, to a result, the policy’s primary objective is affected communities, it was little more less than ambitious. The policy intends than information sharing. One man only “to provide the affected population complained, “They’ve consulted day and with the opportunity to participate, on an night, but problems are still not being equal basis, in the planning, design, taken care of. If they don’t respect our implementation, management and decisions or meet our desires, why do monitoring of programmes and projects they consult us?”5 Other affected people to address the (positive and negative) suspected that “the LHDA deliberately impacts associated with the LHWP” consulted people in their own homes, so (emphasis added).9 Construction of that they were asked for their views or Mohale Dam, as designed, is assumed a decisions in isolation, and not in…pitso, foregone conclusion, while the where they might have developed a more participation of affected communities is united front.”6 restricted to planning how to repair the damage through participation in LHDA admitted at the time that “the designing LHDA mitigation plans. overall general feeling one gets in the encounters and meetings is that of Many community representatives mistrust the communities have of the suspected the policy was an LHDA LHDA field staff.”7 Project authorities’ tactic to spread the blame when goal appeared to be that of garnering compensation and development affected communities’ support of the programs failed to meet their objectives. project as opposed to entering into a fair Even so, by accident or design, the negotiation process with them. In effect, structures devised to achieve even the the LHDA consultants tried “to explain limited objective of allowing the terms of compensation in a helpful participation in mitigation planning were way that (would) win community little more than expensive information- support because the terms (were) sharing mechanisms, which served to generous”8 rather than to set up an open “lubricate decision-making in order to dialogue where the two parties could secure predetermined goals.”10 come to mutually acceptable terms. Affected people had no forum to In brief, the participation strategy rested effectively negotiate how the dam would on the establishment of three new impact them, let alone influence the organizational structures: Field decision to build it. In fact, LHDA did Operation Teams (FOT), Community not even devise its Participation Policy Liaison Assistants (CLA), and and Strategy until three years after Combined Area Liaison Committees construction at Mohale began. (CALC).

Even if the participation policy had been The FOT participation responsibilities implemented three years earlier, though, consist of ensuring grievances are it would not have ensured a seat at the attended to promptly and “that decision-

49 Selling the Dream making processes … include all relevant The World Bank has expressed stakeholders.”11 This assurance of disappointment with the performance of inclusive decision-making appears the FOTs. Rather than decentralizing commendable on paper, but, in practice, decision-making, “the FOTs have tended FOTs have no power to carry out to become field-level bureaucracies,” decision-making processes that involve said Andrew Macoun, the World Bank policy or major budget allocations. Thus, task manager for the project.13 the decisions facilitated by FOT leaders tend to concern relatively minor issues Another ill-conceived participation involving individual households. All program was the appointment of major decisions must be made at approximately 30 Community Liaison LHDA’s head offices, without Assistants (CLAs). LHDA selected the meaningful input from stakeholders. A CLAs from affected villages14 and case in point is that of the still assigned each one to represent a unresolved problems concerning different sub-region of the project area. compensation of communal assets. The Their primary role is to facilitate problem appears to be an ideal scenario “effective” contact between LHDA and for negotiation between LHDA and the affected villages.15 In reality, the affected communities. Instead, the CLAs form an extra degree of separation decision to replace fodder compensation between affected communities and the with community development projects LHDA. Communities inform their CLA was taken by LHDA and JPTC officials of their grievances and then expect in Maseru. It then became the task of the him/her to advocate for their resolution FOT to convince local communities to by the LHDA. The CLA has absolutely support the plan. no power to resolve the problems other than to repeatedly inform the FOT The FOT also regulates contact between Leader. In some cases, the CLA is a project-affected people and the outside lightning rod for conflicts over world. The policy document makes clear compensation. “I tell LHDA about the that “the FOT Team Leader will hold a village’s problems and they keep telling key position, since all LHWP-related me that they will take care of it, but they access to the affected households should still haven’t done so. Now, people in the be co-ordinated through his/her office. village are accusing me. They think that This is a crucial issue, as uncoordinated I’m not doing my job of telling LHDA movement visits (sic) to affected villages about their problems,” complained one could seriously compromise the Katse CLA.16 participation process.”12 Attempting to “coordinate” outsiders’ access to LHDA compensates the CLAs affected households is difficult to the handsomely for their trouble. They point of being impractical, but FOT receive “honoraria” of approximately members have already instructed $415 per month.17 The monthly income villages to refuse access to fieldworkers of the vast majority of mountain from the Transformation Resource households is less than $70.18 In effect, Centre. they are LHDA employees. Affected communities have no illusions of their objectivity and expect them to simply

50 Selling the Dream recite the company line. NGOs also do allowance” of almost $7 per meeting.21 not accept CLAs as legitimate Each member, therefore, receives $21 representatives of affected communities, per month, almost one third of the calling them “LHDA policy interpreters typical highland household’s monthly and nothing more.”19 Nevertheless, income.22 The participation budget CLAs’ honoraria comprise almost half called for almost one third of a million of the participation program’s $333,000 dollars for its first year of operation annual budget.20 alone.23 Honoraria and meeting allowances for CALC members LHDA created another degree of comprised about three-quarters of this separation between themselves and the budget. concerns of affected communities in the form of Combined Area Liaison Villagers who were not fortunate enough Committees (CALCs). These to be ALC or CALC members became committees are to be the LHDA- increasingly frustrated. As early as 1996, recognized voice of affected affected people expressed fears that their communities and are comprised of CALC representatives had been co- elected representatives from all affected opted, “People here have lost confidence villages and resettlement host in the committees—they seem to be part communities. According to the project and parcel of the project authorities document, the committees are to 1) now.”24 This sentiment continues to the inform LHDA of the development needs present day. In some cases, affected of local communities; 2) exchange villages wanted to remove their views/information on the LHDA’s representatives because of their activities; 3) channel compensation ineffectiveness. LHDA refused to allow complaints; 4) identify local candidates this because they wanted the committees for skills training; and 5) identify to maintain “continuity.” When vulnerable households who should disenfranchised community members receive special LHDA or government raised their grievances outside of the assistance. The role of CALCs is CALC through the help of local NGOs, exclusively that of information- LHDA cried foul, and CALC members exchange, not negotiation. called NGOs “perpetrators of discord.”25 They declared that community concerns Typical CALC meetings consist of should be raised through “recognized” community representatives repeatedly community participation structures, raising the same grievances often for structures that affected communities three or four meetings in a row with perceived to have been corrupted by LHDA officials repeatedly explaining being on the LHDA payroll.26 the Byzantine bureaucratic processes that prevent them from being resolved. Other problems with the CALC stem This did not aggravate the CALC from the fact that the majority of CALC members excessively because, like the members come from host communities, CLAs, they are also paid by the LHDA. not resettled communities. Transforma- A typical CALC member attends three tion Resource Centre reports that the CALC meetings every month. The better-organized host community participation policy grants a “meeting representatives effectively dominate the

51 Selling the Dream

CALC. When the LHDA offers presence appeared to be an opportunities such as skills training afterthought, and they were given through CALC members, resettled little opportunity to contribute at communities are often not aware of it the one-day event. because host community CALC • As recently as December 1999, members quickly scoop up all the NSS agents confiscated World available openings.27 Resettled people, Commission on Dams (WCD) therefore, rarely receive training. materials from a community representative upon his return Local NGOs became increasingly from NGO-sponsored hearings critical of LHDA’s participation plan, intended to gather input for the which they labeled “a donor WCD from dam-affected appeasement undertaking.”28 Said people.31 Transformation Resource Centre (TRC), “One of the strategies to silence the The LHDA announced in January 2001 people is that of establishing structures that the Community Participation purported to represent them. But it is Strategy was under internal review.32 obvious that in the meantime the Local NGOs voiced their concern that structures are used to suppress and this process, ostensibly intended to undermine the needs of the people they enhance stakeholders’ involvement in claim to represent.”29 project decision-making, remained outside public purview. A TRC staff The following are several recent member insisted the review “should be a examples of the restraints put on mutual process to avoid past mistakes stakeholder participation. where LHDA involved NGOs at the eleventh hour when their input could no • In September 1996, police longer matter.”33 As of this writing, opened fire on striking affected people and NGOs have not been construction workers at Muela granted official input into the review Dam, killing five and injuring 30, process. notching up the intimidation factor significantly. There was The prospects for meaningful public never a trial, and the killers went participation in LHWP areas remain unpunished. bleak. While the veneer of “consultation • Community representatives claim with stakeholders” may have improved to have been offered gifts of the project’s image, the voices of the alcohol and cash in exchange for most affected remain excluded from speaking favorably of the project decision-making. at public meetings.30 1 • In 1999, when the Lesotho Malefane Maema and Norman Reynolds, Lesotho Highlands Water Project-induced Displacement: government staged a LHWP Context, Impacts, Rehabilitation Strategies, Treaty Review, only a handful of Implementation Experience and Future Options, 1995, the hundreds of attendees were p. 5. 2 Kate Showers, Colonial and Post-Apartheid Water people who would be Projects in Southern Africa: Political Agendas and dispossessed of their land if Environmental Consequences, 1998, p. 21. further dams were built. Their

52 Selling the Dream

3 Scott Coverdale and Lori Pottinger, From Here to 31 Transformation Resource Centre, Letter to Kader Eternity: Promises Versus Reality on the LHWP, Asmal, Chair of the World Commission on Dams. August 28, 1996, p. 3. February 25, 2000. 4 World Bank, Lesotho: LHWP Back to Office Report, 32 Sofonea Shale, “LHDA Celebrates With The Old,” April 4, 1994, annex 5, p. 6. Mopheme/The Survivor, January 9, 2001. 5 Lori Pottinger, Lesotho Highlands Trip Report, 33 Ibid. September 1996, p. 10. 6 Olivia Bennett, “Tearing the Threads: The Social Costs of Forced Resettlement,” Oral History, Spring 1999, p. 41. 7 LHDA, Resettlement and Development Study: Task 1 Volume 2 Main Report, November 1995, p. 74. 8 Robert Archer, Trust in Construction? Christian Aid, 1995, p. 37. 9 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 12. 10 Nicholas Hildyard, Comments on WCD Thematic Paper – Participation, Negotiation and Conflict Management, March 2000, p. 3. 11 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 13. 12 Ibid., p. 13. 13 Andrew Macoun, pers. comm., December 12, 2000. 14 TRC asserts that Hunting-Consult 4, a firm contracted to carry out the compensation and resettlement study, in fact recruited Mohale CLAs who were then hired by LHDA under unknown terms. 15 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 15. 16 Pers. comm., 1999. 17 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 49. 18 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June 2000, p. 81. 19 Transformation Resource Centre, “What Does Community Participation Mean?” Work for Justice, December 2000, p. 13. 20 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 22. 21 Ibid. 22 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June 2000, p. 81. 23 LHDA, Community Participation Policy and Strategy, March 27, 1997, p. 22. 24 Lori Pottinger, Lesotho Highlands Trip Report, September 1996, p. 10. 25 Transformation Resource Centre, “What Does Community Participation Mean?” Work for Justice, December 2000, p. 13. 26 Pers. comm., 2000. 27 Transformation Resource Centre, pers. comm., February 7, 2001. 28 Transformation Resource Centre, “What Does Community Participation Mean?” Work for Justice, December 2000, p. 14. 29 Ibid., p. 13. 30 Pers. comm., 1997.

Conclusion

On paper, at least, project proponents sound project, and will be even better may not be wrong in calling the LHWP after the World Bank and LHDA finally resettlement and compensation programs solve the project’s social problems. “best practice.” Unfortunately, “best practice” was not enough. Compared The unfortunate truth, however, is that with other large-scale dam projects, the the barriers to true development among efforts to restore people’s lives and dam-affected people are virtually livelihoods were fairly extensive. The insurmountable. According to Panel of LHWP has likely hired more social and Expert member Ted Scudder, “forced environmental consultants, has budgeted resettlement is about the worst thing you more money for social programs, and can do to a people next to killing them.”1 has made more promises of development Therefore, while there is undoubtedly than almost any other dam project in the room for improvement on the LHWP’s world. An independent Panel of social policies, it is unlikely that further Environmental Experts investigated and tinkering would have restored affected monitored the project on a twice-yearly people’s livelihoods, let alone improved basis. Seemingly, LHDA and the World their quality of life. Bank took serious steps to prevent social fallout in the Highlands communities. The World Commission on Dams (WCD) offers guidelines for project On the ground, however, LHWP planning that may have prevented the resettlement plans have impoverished havoc wreaked on highlands affected people. Compensation plans communities. The WCD was an have failed to adequately replace lost independent body sponsored in part by assets and created a dole-dependent the World Bank to review the welfare class. Development plans have performance of large dams and make uniformly failed to meet their objectives. extensive recommendations for future Participation policies have failed to planning of water and energy projects. increase affected community “buy in” to Its final report was released in the project. November 2000.2

If this is the case, then what more could Had WCD guidelines been followed at have been done to improve the situation? the inception of the LHWP, a very different scenario may have emerged. In Project proponents ask this question fact, the Lesotho dams most probably repeatedly. They perceive the problem to would not have been built. Below is an be simply with flaws in the resettlement overview of how things might have gone and development plans, and believe that, according to WCD guidelines. after a period of trial and error, a workable solution will be discovered. Needs Assessment This endless process of incremental The WCD calls for a “needs assessment” modification, in effect, legitimates the to ensure that there is justification for a project. It implies that the LHWP is a project. If this guideline had been

54 Conclusion followed, the planning process would This is a shocking figure. “Best practice” have first focused on determining the for levels of water loss is considered to actual needs for the project. More be 10 percent. Recovering this waste specifically, does South Africa need would negate the need for additional water from Lesotho? The likely supply and save the water utility $62 conclusion would have been similar to million every year.7 the one reached by planners at Rand Water, Gauteng’s water utility, who Wastage also comes in the form of over- stated in 1998 that Mohale Dam could watering of gardens, long showers, and be delayed as much as 17-20 years if high-pressure fixtures. Retrofitting system efficiency was increased through houses with efficient water fixtures the employment of demand-side alone could lead to an eight-year delay management (DSM). for new water supply.8

The utility believes that demand The WCD report states a priority should projections for water use in Gauteng be to “increase the effectiveness of have historically been too high.3 This led existing water…systems”9 before to the construction of new water supply building new supply, and that “demand- dams before they were actually required. side options should be given the same Now, the horrific toll exacted by the significance as supply options.”10 AIDS epidemic is driving down figures Unfortunately, at the time Mohale was on projected water demand even further. being considered, the World Bank did Rand Water estimates that the impact of not have staff that specialized in DSM, AIDS will eventually reduce growth in and it was eager to keep the project water demand to zero percent.4 In fact, moving. As a result, the Bank decided to the South African Department of Water continue with the project without a Affairs recently admitted that no new thorough analysis of DSM’s ability to water supply is needed for Gauteng delay the project. A Bank study on the Province until 2025. Moreover, this economics of such a delay argued that projection does not include proposed postponing Mohale would drive up DSM measures that would push the date construction costs. back much longer, (at least 10-15 years). Today, planners thinking about further Increasing Efficiency Lesotho dams have considered effici- Excessive water losses also led to the ency options more carefully. As the two perceived need for more dams and the governments consider the construction premature augmentation of Gauteng’s of the next big dam (Mashai), Rand water supply. Deteriorating infrastruc- Water claims that a $300 million ture, lack of maintenance, low quality investment in DSM would deliver a pipes, and poor workmanship cause yield equivalent to a $2.5 billion these water losses, which are estimated investment in Mashai Dam.11 Simply to be 27 percent in Gauteng.5 Residents put, the LHWP appears to have been of Johannesburg’s townships, like unnecessary to meet South Africa’s Alexandra and Soweto, collect water present water needs. Instead, the imple- from apartheid-era systems that waste up mentation of DSM should have been the to 70 percent of water piped to them.6 preferred option to meet demand.

55 Conclusion

Risk communities may also have demanded Before a decision is made on whether or to receive compensation. People living not to build a dam, the WCD posits that in inundation zones may have refused to risks “must be identified, articulated and move. All of these concessions would addressed explicitly. Most important, have lessened the economic advantage to involuntary risk bearers must be provid- South Africa of building water supply ed with the legal right to engage with dams in Lesotho, and probably would risk takers in a transparent process to have made it a more expensive option ensure that risks and benefits are nego- than either accessing supply elsewhere tiated on a more equitable basis.” It (e.g., South Africa) or reducing demand. further states, “Determining what is an acceptable level of risk should be under- Sharing Benefits taken through a collective political The WCD states, “Adversely affected process.”12 people are recognised as first among the beneficiaries of the project” and that This negotiation should take place in the “mutually agreed and legally protected form of a stakeholder forum comprised benefit sharing mechanisms are not only of government planners, but negotiated to ensure implementation.”13 also of the people whose livelihoods, human rights, and property and resource Lesotho currently receives approx- rights would be negatively impacted by imately $25 million annually in royalties the project. Other stakeholders would from the project.14 Yet, the country’s include relevant NGOs and academics to rural poor have benefited little from this further ensure that social and environ- windfall. Lesotho still has one of the top mental risks are sufficiently discussed. If ten greatest income disparities in the the stakeholder forum agreed that a dam world, and socio-economic data from was the preferred option to meet water LHWP-affected areas suggest that they demand, they would also negotiate have “not done any better than other resettlement and development plans for parts of the mountains, where levels of affected people. Finally, to ensure that poverty remain high.”15 affected people receive all of their negotiated entitlements according to The Lesotho Fund for Community agreed upon schedules, the WCD Development (LFCD) is intended to recommends that the developer be distribute the project’s royalties to the required to abide by a number of nation’s poorest. Instead, the World performance contracts, compliance Bank has already been forced to plans, and performance bonds. restructure the LFCD in part because In the sort of fair and informed corrupt local politicians were using the negotiation recommended by the WCD, money to reward supporters of the ruling potentially affected people in Lesotho party. The LFCD also does not direct and their NGO allies could have insisted project royalties toward dam-affected upon land for land compensation. They people specifically. WCD guidelines may have demanded significantly higher would have ensured that people affected compensation rates. They may have by the dam had the opportunity to negotiated to receive a percentage of negotiate a share of these benefits. project revenue. Downstream

56 Conclusion

Downstream Impacts call for equitable benefit sharing instead The WCD also calls for “an environ- of token compensation for lost mental flow requirement to maintain livelihoods. The LHWP could not or did downstream species, ecosystems and not rise to this challenge, and destroyed livelihoods.”16 It further states, “A basin- livelihoods as a result. wide understanding of the ecosystems functions, values and requirements, and The World Bank and other multi-lateral how community livelihoods depend on investment banks continue to sell dams and influence them, is required before as development projects for poor decisions on development options are countries. Dam-driven development in made.”17 Lesotho, however, has proved to be nothing but an expensive pipe dream. The LHWP was begun without an The WCD calls for an awakening from environmental flow study. Belatedly, the this delusion to a new day of governments of Lesotho and South development decision-making that Africa recently commissioned an affords potentially affected people the Instream Flow Requirement study to right to determine their own destiny. assess the impacts of the LHWP dams (present and future) on downstream communities and ecosystems. The study 1 Jonathan A. Fox, “When Does Reform Policy Influence Practice? Lessons from the Bankwide found that continuing with the project as Resettlement Review,” Jonathan A. Fox and L. David proposed will reduce Lesotho’s river Brown, ed., The Struggle for Accountability: the systems to “something akin to World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements, 18 Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998, p. 330. wastewater drains.” This translates into 2 See www.dams.org for the final report. “critically severe” social impacts 3 Roy Thomson, Financial Viability of Water Demand (resource losses, increased pollutants) Management Within the Gauteng Province, Rand Water Board, October 1999, p. 1. that will cost between $2.8-$4.2 million 4 Rand Water Board, pers. comm., February 6, 2001. annually to address. 5 Roy Thomson, Financial Viability of Water Demand Management Within the Gauteng Province, Rand Water Board, October 1999, p. 3. The New “Best Practice” 6 Rand Water Board, pers. comm., February 6, 2001. The WCD guidelines are the new 7 Roy Thomson, Financial Viability of Water Demand standard in “best practice.” But unlike Management Within the Gauteng Province, Rand Water Board, October 1999, p. 5. existing standards for mitigation of the 8 Ibid., p. 3. impacts of harmful development 9 World Commission on Dams, Dams and schemes, the WCD guidelines start with Development: A New Framework for Decision- Making, November 2000, p. 221. the most basic questions – what is the 10 Ibid., p. 267. need we are trying to address and what is 11 Rand Water Board, pers. comm., February 6, 2001. the best way to meet that need? These 12 World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision- guidelines call for modest investments in Making, November 2000, p. 237. improved efficiency, instead of hundreds 13 Ibid., p. 243. of millions of dollars spent on picking 14 World Bank, pers. comm., January 11, 2001. 15 Sechaba Consultants, Poverty and Livelihoods in up the pieces of shattered communities. Lesotho, 2000: More than a Mapping Exercise, June They call for meaningful participation of 2000, p. 41. involuntary risk takers in decision- 16 World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision- making, instead of boardroom deals that Making, November 2000, p. 269. consign thousands to destitution. They 17 Ibid., p. 236.

57 Conclusion

18 Metsi Consultants, Contract LHDA 648 Final Report: Consulting Services for the Establishment and Monitoring of the Instream Flow Requirements for River Courses Downstream of LHWP Dams, November 1999, p. 28

58 Conclusion

About IRN About the Author

International Rivers Network (IRN) is a Ryan Hoover lived among the dam- nongovernmental organization dedicated affected communities in Lesotho from to protecting and restoring the world's 1997-2000 as a volunteer with the rivers and watersheds for the benefit of Mennonite Central Committee. This the people and ecosystems who depend work involved the documentation of on them. Since 1986, IRN has worked to community grievances, village-level halt destructive river development empowerment trainings, and liaising projects, and to encourage equitable and with project authorities. He currently sustainable methods of meeting needs works in IRN’s Africa Program. for water, energy and flood management. We work to promote sound management of the planet's freshwater Acknowledgments resources, to link environmental protection and human rights, to create a This report benefited enormously from worldwide understanding of river the contributions and insights of many ecology, and to reveal the interdep- people. Special thanks go to Elizabeth endence of rivers' biological, physical Brink, Thabang Kholumo, Jacob Lenka, and cultural aspects. Steve Rothert, Motšeoa Senyane, Mothusi Seqhee, Sofonea Shale and to Through research into alternative energy my wonderful editor, Lori Pottinger. generation, irrigation and flood management schemes, pressure for policy reform at international financial institutions like the World Bank, and active media and educational campaigns around the world, IRN works to discourage investment in destructive large-scale river development while encouraging strategies that are more environmentally, socially and economically sound.

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