South African – Danish Environmental Co-operation
Visions with a price
The attempted clean-up of South Africa’s mountains of waste has revealed a nation whose budget is sometimes too small to finance its environmental ambitions
South Africa’s first seven years with democracy has seen numerous clashes between huge ambitions and a lack of money to see them through. The Danced-funded process that secured a new waste management strategy is no exception.
All the parties involved heap praise on the process itself. If nothing else, it was a major break with apartheid’s legendary secretiveness and one-way communication. Everybody was asked to appoint representatives to the steering committee working on the strategy: government departments, provinces, business, the mining industry, NGOs and unions.
Peter Mokaba, then Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism, personally chaired most meetings. And participants credit Danced for making the process a model of co-operation between the government and the public on new legislation.
"Danced’s funding allowed the Department of Environment and Tourism to develop a national waste strategy sooner than it might have done without the funding. There is no doubt that donor funding plays an important part in the department’s activities," says Laurraine Lötter of the Chemical and Allied Industries Association.
"We got a total solution rather than just a technical solution. It took some heavy debate and long hours of re-working the document. But along the way, everybody bought into the process," says Jenny Hall who represented the NGOs at the negotiations.
Less waste, better cleaning
The final strategy notes two overall ambitions for South Africa’s approach to pollution, whether it’s waste from townships or emissions from industry:
 | The total amounts of waste and emissions must come down through recycling, tougher standards and a reduced consumption of fuel, chemicals and water. |
| The remaining waste must be collected and disposed in more efficient and safer ways, particularly in the poorer communities wherewaste is a health hazard. |
All parties insisted that the strategy and the action plan should contain ideal solutions, even if it would take many years to implement them.
Jerry Lengoasa, former Chief Director for environmental quality and protection at the Department of Environment and Tourism, inherited the thankless task of piloting the action plan through to reality. It proved extremely difficult:
"The estimated implementation cost for the entire strategy and action plans is one billion rand, mainly to human resources. This happened at a time when the municipal system of the country being overhauled and the the number of municipalities being cut down. It also coincided with most affluent municipalities moving towards outsourcing their services," says Lengoasa.
Too European
Lengoasa was not alone in experiencing a gap between "European ambitions" and the harsh realities of South Africa. Many departments spent the first years after 1994 working on ambitious policies while too little effort was invested in delivering the services and improvements which people expected, says Lengoasa.
"A lot of strategies were beautiful, correct post-apartheid policy. But they were very difficult to implement. The challenge now is to pull ourselves on from strategies which can’t be implemented."
One example is the action plan for waste collection, says Lengoasa. It is based on a European scenario in terms of which trucks cruise through leafy, orderly suburbs. A typical result of the desire to find ideal solutions, but also an example of first world South Africa struggling with the country’s third world realities.
"What we really needed was to find a man with a van and a group of unemployed women who on a regular basis could clear out the street corners," says Lengoasa who describes himself as "a bit of a maverick when it comes to development strategies".
"I believe in writing out terms and developing strategies as you try out projects," he says.
To start implementing the waste action plan, he found creative ways to dig into the funds for poverty alleviation set aside in the state budget. In the 1990s, several ministries were battling to distribute billions of rands to the poor; the bureaucracy was simply unable to cope. In 1999 and 2000, Lengoasa managed to lay his hands on R30 million for a total of 30 pilot projects in waste management, spread over all nine provinces.
The money was earmarked for wages and was given primarily to township residents who would collect waste. The pilot project in Soweto managed by the local municipality and Danced (see "Waste watchers", page 46) was among his inspirations.
Lengoasa’s department has marketed the projects as part of its so-called "Green and Clean" campaign aimed at teaching the population to appreciate a clean environment. One of the suggestions to municipalities was to create parks with a small entry fee so that people could appreciate the value and cost of a clean environment.
Lengoasa has tried to encourage creative thinking in other governmental departments in an attempt to carry out as much as possible of the strategies and action plan. The Department of Public Works could for instance spend money, earmarked for poverty alleviation, on secure waste dumps built with as much manual labour as possible. This would contribute to the governments stated objectives of poverty alleviation and a cleaner environment for all.
Industry demands standards
Looking beyond the waste dumps in the townships, there are many other major challenges waiting to be addressed. In early 2001, industry was still waiting for the emission standards it never got in the apartheid years. The standards were promised in the waste management strategy but never instituted.
"Government seems to believe that industry wants weak legislation. That is not the case at all. Industry wants to see a sound legislative regime which is implemented on a consistent basis," says Lötter who feels that pressure from NGOs rather than coherent policies too often guides the authorities’ interventions.
Danced has supported initiatives to implement the ambitions in the action plan. Examples include a project to treat medical waste (see "Dressed to rule", page 65), the battle against waste in Soweto (see "Waste watchers", page 46) and cleaner technology (see "With stick and support", page 56). Lötter encourages Danced to continue using as many resources as possible in this regard: "Danced needs to start looking at a situation where they fund practical implementation," she says.