The future of a small desert settlement in Kgalagadi hangs in the balance as it finds itself caught up in Botswana’s stampede for China’s check book diplomacy ÔÇô Writes OUTSA MOKONE and SPENCER MOGAPI
Our introduction to Tshwaane came in the form of a text message on our cell phones. The message said “no service.” After 60 or so bone jarring minutes in a four-wheel drive, we finally sheltered our faces with our hands against the scotching sun and, like giant molehills, the settlement’s windowless mud houses loomed through the blinding sunlight.
If you can make it here, you really can make it anywhere. Well, maybe not anywhere, but Tshwaane is an unforgiving remote outpost very few have ever heard about and even fewer can pin point on the map. The desert sun has turned this Kgalagadi settlement about 100 kilometers west of Letlhakeng into a sizzling sand bowl. The rainy season is almost over even before it started and villagers are preparing for another drought.
Once, that would have meant simply taking their hoes up the settlement’s bushy rocks and digging out tubers of leruswa plants to quench their thirst. “When wells dry up we simply dig out Leruswa tubers to quench our thirst. You can even cook your food in it without water” says the settlement chief, Onthusitse Sengwane, a balding man who looks positively seraphic and yet says he is worried about the future.
Soon, Tshwaane residents may find burrow pits gaping where rocks used to be lush green with Leruswa plants.
Tshwaane is home to desert shrubs and a huge saltpan that was once teeming with one of the richest biodiversity in the country. It is a migratory route of wild animals that come to the pan from Khutse Game Reserve during the wet season. These days, small pits dot the area and the pan has dried to a crusty white circle, a riot of animal hooves and an occasional cow or donkey.
Kgosi Sengwane remembers being called in recently to stop trespassers from the Roads Department who were trying to drive off with a truck full of stones stolen from the banks of the pan. “I forced them to offload the stones, but the damage they have caused is irreparable. They left gaping holes on the path of the water that feeds the pan, so when rains come the water collects in these holes and never makes it to the pan. That is why the pan is so dry. Usually it should be overflowing and teeming with animals this time around,” he said.
Things, however, may get worse before they get better. Tshwaane will soon be home to a transnational highway. If all goes according to plan and schedule, by 2008, there will be an asphalt road connecting Tshwaane to Kang, and more importantly, the Atlantic ports of Namibia through the Trans-Kalahari highway. The project is viewed as a long awaited and close to finalized dream for its proponents, namely the Botswana, South Africa and Namibia freight operators and import export companies. It is, however, a nightmare for environmentalists and residents. The main reason for the road is the inefficient and uneconomical trajectory imports and exports currently must take in order to get to port. The new road will significantly reduce transport times (and costs) going in and out of the country. The big push to reach Namibian ports is the economic allure of import substitution. The Trans-Kalahari Highway (A2) is currently the second busiest road after A1, which links Gaborone and the northern part of the country. The highway links the southern and western parts of Botswana to the eastern corridor and is also a link between SADC countries including Botswana, South Africa and Namibia. It gives access to Botswana’s remote western districts and serves as a strategic link in the Maputo Walvis Bay economic corridor.
Tshwaane residents, however, fear that while the road will bring developments to the area, it will hurt their small settlement more than it will help.
China State Contract, the contractor building the controversial road is chomping at the bits because Tshwaane residents will not let them mine Selkirk quarry from rocks near the saltpan where leruswa plants grow. The nearest Selkirk quarry is more than 50 kilometers away in Takatokwane where the stone is now almost been depleted ÔÇô still a result of the road. Should the residents hold out for one more month, construction of the road will grind to a stop. The Tshwaane Selkirk quarry should have been commissioned two months ago.
We are sitting on folding chairs under a tree shade and Sengwane is bubbling with anger, patches of humour and traces of sarcasm. “These people want to take away our lifeblood and when someone tries to take your lifeblood you know what? Its time to stand up for your rights”, he says, punctuating his statement with “yeees monna David.”
David, a middle-aged Zimbabwean roads engineer who is seated next to Sengwane works for China State Contract. David likes to slip into clich├®s Bakgalagadi use in friendly company. In one favourite bit, he would tell the chief “I am your son.” The playacting has provided a clue to how David wants residents to see him ÔÇô as a friend. Strangely, somewhere in the raging controversy between residents and the Chinese contractor, David forged a friendship with the settlement Sengwane. Soon they were drinking buddies. Residents are, however, reading a sinister motive into David’s friendship: That he is trying to romance the Selkirk stones out of the chief’s clutches.
David and Sengwane are, however, two small pawns in a big chessboard. Botswana has lined up behind a number of African countries queuing for Chinese grants and soft loans. President Festus Mogae recently told the ITN News, a British television station, that Botswana was looking up to China because it is being excluded from Western development assistance initiatives geared to assist African nations. Speaking during a recent visit to China, Mogae said, “We are here to ensure that we are included in the list of beneficiaries and China is willing to help.” For now, the president seems just thrilled that China is talking about development aid and brotherhood rather than the pesky subjects western leaders like to bring up like human rights, good governance and environmental protection. A fast growing world economic power, China is all too happy to make out cheques to “friendly” third world countries without asking too many uncomfortable questions.
The controversial road passing through Tshwane is one of the many projects that are being financed by the Chinese government with no questions asked except that the tendering process should be exclusive to Chinese companies. When all other international financiers are insisting on Environmental Impact Assessment Surveys to ensure that the projects they finance are environmentally friendly, the Chinese government has chosen to look the other way. In return for their money, China demands that it also not be bothered by irritations of its chequered human rights and environmental track records.
The situation is not helped by the fact that the Department of Roads, which has commissioned the projects, is carefree on environmental protection. For example, Somarelang Tikologo, a local green lobby group has been making noise about how “river sand resources are being exploited to meet the increasing demand of the construction industry.”
For sometime, Botswana was the fastest growing economy in the world fueled by the country’s construction boom. Botswana roads were turned into a huge construction site with motorists having to dodge “detour” signs and big yellow construction machinery. Villages surrounding construction sites were reduced to huge burrow pits by convoys of seven-ton trucks carrying river sand and pit sand to feed the insatiable construction industry. To most industry watchers, it did not come as a surprise when it emerged that the Roads Department had earmarked the site near the pristine Tshwaane saltpan for quarry mining without consulting residents.
“If this quarry goes ahead, it will spell doom for the existence of this pan,” says Sengwane.
The Chinese contractors and the Department of Roads have on their side the Land Board that has allocated surface rights in Tshwaane to the Chinese contractor although the area is within a wildlife management area and was earmarked for a communal tourist centre.
A spokesperson from the department of Wildlife and Conservation, Joel Losike, told The Sunday Standard that they are worried because once the Tshwaane natural habitat has been disturbed; it can never be brought back to its natural state. The department has joined forces with Tshwaane residents to oppose the planned mining of Selkirk quarry next to the Tshwaane saltpan. Losike pointed out that the area earmarked for quarry mining is within the wildlife management area and has been set aside for a communal tourist area. Residents of Tshwane, Dutlwe, Tsetseng, Motokwe and Kekenye have grouped themselves and have approached the Department of Wildlife to help them develop the area into a tourist campsite.
A group of young woman who say they have completed form five talk passionately about how they want to raise money to build a lodge.
“How do we call tourists to come here to see big holes dug by Chinese bulldozers? That does not happen anywhere. We will not allow it,” say the young women in support of Sengwane.
Losike says more importantly, the area is also a migratory route of wildlife that comes to the pan from Khutse Game Reserve during the wet season and, as such, more than killing the expanse saltpan digging the habitat will also ruin the whole ecosystem.
It remains to be seen who in the end – Sengwane supported by a handful of his people or the huge contractor supported by a Chinese government will win.
