Friday, April 19, 2024
News and Views from the Global South
SWAZILAND: Add Water and Stir
Phathizwe-Chief Zulu
- What is the first step towards transforming life in a hardscrabble rural community? Address issues of water.
Swaziland's lowveld is badly affected by drought. Credit: IRIN
The Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE), a government parastatal, has injected new life into the community of Maplotini using an integrated water resources management approach.
Maplotini lies in the heart of the lowveld, which receives not more than 300 mm of rain per year.
The area has good soil, but drought has been the community’s nightmare. When SWADE assessed the area in 2006, it found much of the land was being used to graze cattle, with some sugar cane farming, and small plots of vegetables for household consumption.
Livestock and people alike suffered from a shortage of water. Sanitation facilities were also conspicuously absent, exposing the community to disease.
“We had to wait for sunset to relieve ourselves in the nearest bush,” remarked one woman resident.
Ironically, plentiful water is available. When the Pongolapoort dam was completed just across the border in 1973, South Africa agreed to supply a specified amount of water back to the area in compensation for flooding 1,500 hectares on the Swazi side.
So in 2006, infrastructure was already in place to irrigate 530 hectares around Maplotini – to expand sugar cane production and potentially valuable vegetable gardening. It was not being used to its full potential due to internal conflicts in the community and a lack of skills and vision.
Water for household use was directly dependent on the irrigation system, meaning when that supply was suspended, the taps ran dry.Enter SWADE
SWADE is the successor to a company set up by the Swazi government in 1999, to plan and implement management of large water resource projects. With the tagline “using water to drive poverty out of rural communities”, its approach involves building up local leadership and accountability and instilling an entrepreneurial mindset that allows communities to establish and maintain agricultural businesses.
The parastatal’s training programmes rely on story-telling, illustrations, experiential learning and demonstrations in order to overcome typically low levels of literacy. The point is to give communities information and advice, then let them make decisions on how to proceed.
This farming community was established in the early 1960s by the Swazi government, which resettled 72 families from nearby Mkhulamini farm on the instructions of the late King Sobhuza II. Mkhulamini was to be transformed into a fattening ranch, part of an effort to shift Swazi livestock herders from keeping cattle as a sign of status and prestige to regarding livestock as a business.
The male heads of the resettled families were each allocated eight hectares, and today these are the dominant figures in the community today, 56 men (and 16 women who have inherited the title originally granted to their husbands) controlling the Maplotini Farmers' Cooperative and the local investment company as well as the lion's share of the sugarcane growing in the area.
Now grown-up children born to the resettled families and others who were allocated land in the area by the local chief have access to only enough land only to build houses for themselves, but not to farm.
This was one of the challenges that had to be overcome in creating income-generating projects.
Working with the community
Mbabazeni Matsenjwa, chair of the Maplotini Water Project, says SWADE partnered with the community to install water taps and build proper pit latrines.
SWADE met them halfway. “As community members we dug pits in our homesteads and SWADE provided us with seats, bricks and roofing,” Matsenjwa says.
SWADE also distributed 1,000-litre tanks to each home and connected them to a supply from Swaziland Water Services Corporation. The safe drinking water is also used to water backyard gardens. This component of the project in Maplotini cost $120,000, sourced from the Southern African Development Community, the Danish International Development Agency and the Swazi government itself.
A reliable domestic water supply has come as a relief to residents.
“We had to drive donkey carts to Lavumisa town (five km away). Or hire a van to town at 50 rand (just over $6) to carry 210 litres. The town board charged us 60 cents per 25 litres,” explains Matsenjwa.
With the advent of the scheme, project manager Jerry Nxumalo says the community pays for the maintenance of the domestic water infrastructure – and for the water itself, of course. Maplotini has a water committee and a small team to take care of the system.
Sustainable development
In line with the IWRM approach, provision – and maintenance – of water and sanitation services is not happening in isolation. A communal garden project has been established, to teach and support the community to practice sustainable agriculture.
Thandi Phiri is chair of the garden project which they christened “Zondemavila”, or “hate lazy people” in siSwati. The lush, green garden produces various vegetables, like spinach, beetroot, carrots, onions and more.
“This project is a dream come true for us here. We hardly stay home. As it is cold today, I should be at home enjoying fire, but look here I am, working on my plot,” Phiri says as she rubs mud from her bare feet.
She pauses in her work on a patch of tomatoes. “Before SWADE came,” she continues, “we would be sitting home doing nothing. Not because we were lazy, but because we could do nothing. We had no land to use. But now I am able to pick spinach to feed my family.”
Phiri says secured 10 hectares of land from the sugar cane farmers, and with SWADE’s assistance, set up pipes for irrigation, fencing, and water taps to plant six hectares of vegetables. and they helped the farmers with plouging the 6 hectares. The communal garden project currently has seventy-two members, each of whom has been allocated a 25 by 50 metre plot.
The gardening has put food in the community’s kitchens, and it is also improving lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. Thabisile Dlamini and Zanele Dlamini are both farmers and home-based carers with an organisation called Mothers for Life, based in Lavumisa.
Zanele Dlamini says Mothers for Life was given a hectare to grow vegetables for those who are destitute and chronically sick. “As we do care work, we assess the various needs of the patients. We give vegetables to some, or cook (for others), for we understand that anti-retroviral therapy needs the patient to eat well.
Slow but effective
The three-year journey has been a long one for the community. Project manager Nxumalo says the project started slowly, with painstaking negotiations to find common ground among the different parties involved.
There were internal conflicts within the Maplotini Farmers’ Cooperative. Farm dwellers were not united. There was distrust between those who had been allocated plots by the chief and those from the original resettlement in 1960s.
Giant strides have been made. In addition to the community garden, and the supply of drinking water and improved sanitation, the area planted with sugar cane was increased from 180 to 234 hectares and 91 hectares were planted with other crops by the Maplotini Cooperative. The Cooperative also planted 40 hectares with vegetables for sale in local markets.
Few of the homesteads in the area require donated food and SWADE expects the community has been set on a path of sustainable income generation.
Reviewing three years of effort, DANIDA programme officer Tania Diederiks said, “SWADE cannot remain here forever. They have assisted you to get onto your (own) feet. Now you know what you want and how to get it after being empowered, so you should go for it with all your abilities.”
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