Article written by Sipho Masondo (Investigative Journalist) for News24
The company, which laid the 300km pipeline in about 18 months for the Giyani water project should have little trouble completing the remaining 25km, argues Sipho Masondo.
Believe it or not, as a venal, crooked, and corrupt as the ANC is, it is still home to some of the most honest, upright, and genuine politicians you can find in South Africa.
One such politician is the venerated Senzo Mchunu, the minister of water and sanitation.
Mchunu doesn’t just believe in the ANC’s traditional values of self-sacrifice, integrity, and trustworthiness; he lives them daily.
Unlike many of the party’s kleptocratic politicians who have succumbed to the trappings of power, live extravagant lifestyles in multimillion mansions and drive big SUVs, quite often acquired through deception and corruption, Mchunu leads a frugal and unpretentious existence.
His family home in Empangeni on KwaZulu-Natal’s North Coast is unassuming and modest. He is free from egotism and vanity. He, his wife, and his children drive everyday working-class cars.
Had he won that contest, he would have worked overtime to arrest the ANC’s decline, and the party would probably be in a better shape than it is today.
But unfortunately, when it comes to the delivery of services – at least where the notorious Giyani water project is concerned – Mchuni does not fare better than some of the ANC’s worst deadwood.
Two years after he was appointed to the department, he and his officials have failed to complete the controversial project.
But in typical ANC fashion, he has made one unmet promise after another to complete the project and finally deliver water to 55 villages surrounding Giyani.
In December last year, he and President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the infamous project.
During the tour, Mchunu promised restive residents water would flow out of their taps by the end of March.
Needless to say, it was another empty promise. In April, Mchunu shifted the goalpost to the end of December.
The R3 billion bulk water infrastructure project ground to a halt and was aborted in October 2018 when the Department of Water and Sanitation failed to pay Khato Civils, the company employed to install 325km of bulk water pipes in and around Giyani.
Khato walked away from the construction site after the department failed to pay the company in nine months.
When it aborted the project, the company had already installed 300km of the 325km of bulk waterpipes it was contracted to install.
When Ramaphosa became president in 2018, he appointed the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency (Misa) to audit the project.
In its report, dated January 2019, Misa concluded Khato had installed 300km of bulk water pipes, which amounted to 92% of the entire project.
The entity said in its report: the overall implementation progress is 92% (300 km). The remaining work includes the construction of 25km pipeline, river crossings, installation of valves, chamber construction, pressure testing, connection to existing services ,and commissioning. The project comprises the replacement of existing asbestos cement pipes with uPVC pipes and upgrading the network.
After Khato walked away from the project, the then-minister of water and sanitation, Gugile Nkwinti, appointed Construction North, the department’s internal construction unit, to complete the remaining 25km pipeline.
Before commencing construction, the entity also conducted an assessment of what exactly was needed to be done.
Construction North’s own assessment, dated March 2019, also concluded the construction of the pipelines was almost complete.
But five years after Khato was forced to abandon the project due to non-payment, Ramaphosa and the Department of Water and Sanitation have failed to lay the remaining 25km pipeline.
Quite often, journalists, commentators, and opposition parties hastily dish out ill-informed comments about the government’s failures with little appreciation of the complexities of governance and its processes.
But by any standard, struggling to lay a 25km pipeline in five years amounts to a horrendous failure.
How long does it take to construct a 25km water pipeline? This is embarrassing, to say the least.
It is only a matter of time before an ANC bright spark lays the blame for the failure to complete this project at the doors of apartheid.
If you can’t lay down a 25km bulk water pipeline in five years, what hope in hell do you have of building smart cities, high-speed rail and fixing Eskom and Transnet?
Since the Giyani project, Khato has gone on to complete other major projects across the country and elsewhere on the African continent.
These include the rehabilitation of the M1 double-decker bridge, a 3.20km outfall sewer pipe for the Polokwane Municipality, a 25km water pipeline, and water
The company is currently completing the construction of a wastewater treatment plant that will treat four million mega litres of wastewater everyday. This project is also in Gaborone, Botswana.
As part of a joint venture, Khato has completed the installation of transformers and switchgear for Transnet in Saldanha Bay.
This company is clearly capable of handling mega projects and if I was Mchunu, I would swallow my pride, reach out to Khato, settle its unpaid invoices and ask it to return to the site to complete the project.
The company, which laid the 300km pipelines in about 18 months, should have little trouble completing the remaining 25km.
Mchunu is not the only one who should swallow his pride. The other person who should do so is advocate Andy Mothibi, the head of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
Five years ago, the SIU instituted a R2.2 billion civil claim against Khato, South Zambezi and LTE Consulting in connection with the Giyani water project.
The contract to deliver the project was irregularly awarded to LTE Consulting in 2014.
At the time, the Lepelle Northern Water Board had awarded LTE the contract without a public tender process.
The initial contract was a R100 million turnkey project to f x a wastewater treatment plant in Giyani.
Lepelle Northen Water later piled more irregular tenders on LTE, handing the company another turnkey contract to lay down 325km pipelines without following tender processes.
LTE subcontracted South Zambezi and Khato to design and handle the construction, respectively.
In court papers filed at the Polokwane High Court in November 2018, the SIU said it wanted LTE, South Zambezi and Khato to repay the R2.2 billion the companies had been paid for the project.
The SIU’s civil suit doesn’t make sense because Khato laid 300km of bulk water pipes – it did the work. But it is understandable why the elite crime busters launched the claim in the first place.
Mothibi filed the civil claim on the back of misleading media reports that Khato simply took the money and vanished without doing any work.
Mothibi has no case, and as such, he should swallow his pride and withdraw the claim as it would amount to a waste of the court’s valuable time.
Khato fulfilled all its contractual obligations until the Department of Water and Sanitation failed to pay it.
Over the last six years, Mothibi, who is decidedly the Ramaphosa administration’s best-performing functionary, has recovered hundreds of millions on behalf of the state.
He has done so by launching urgent applications to freeze and preserve funds and property on behalf of parastatals and government departments, pending the determination of final forfeiture applications.
The fact Mothibi has not taken this particular case to court in five years and has shown little appetite to do so is an indication he has no case.
Almost two years to the day, in this very publication, I wrote a column urging Mchunu to speed up the completion of this project.
It would amount to such a travesty of justice if we are still discussing this matter in two years’ time.
In less than a year, it would be a decade – a full decade – since this project began. May the end of the decade coincide with water flowing out of the taps of Giyani’s villagers’ yards.
Article written by Sipho Masondo (Investigative Journalist) for News24
Below is the link for the article:
https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/sipho-masondo/sipho-masondo-waterless-giyani-five-years-and-counting-to-lay-25km-water-pipeline-20230912