Darkness in the Lesotho Highlands - Promises for Power Go Unfulfilled

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a massive, multi–dam scheme built to divert water from Lesotho’s Maloti Mountains to South Africa’s industrial Gauteng Province. The first phase of the project involved the construction of two large dams, Katse and Muela, which dispossessed 20,000 rural farmers of assets (ranging from fields to grazing lands) and livelihoods. In an effort to prevent the permanent impoverishment of these people, the governments of South Africa and Lesotho promised in the LHWP Treaty that affected people "will be enabled to maintain a standard of living not inferior to that obtaining at the time of first disturbance."¹

As part of the fulfillment of that promise, the parastatal building the dam, the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA), pledged in its 1990 Rural Development Plan to provide electricity to 10 remote villages located near Katse and Muela Dams within six years. The project consultants budgeted $1million to complete the project.² Today, a decade later, no homes of project–affected people have been electrified.

It appears project authorities never had any intention of following through on this commitment. The economic realities in the target villages clearly indicated that the project would not be feasible. At the time the plan was devised, the average monthly income for households in the project areas was approximately $65, and only 7.3 percent of the households made over $200 per month.³ The average monthly income of Lesotho Electricity Corporation (LEC) customers at the time was more than twice that amount. In the project document, the consultants concede that "given the monthly income of most electricity consumers in Lesotho is known to be over $400, the proportion of any community in the mountains likely to use electricity, in the absence of a large subsidy, will be low."⁴ Undeterred, they suggested that a few households already spent more on wood fuel than they would (in the long term) spend on electricity costs and thus were potential customers. Unfortunately for the project, the average affected household spent only $2 per month on fuel, far less than the $12.29 per month that they would need to pay for electricity and appliances.⁵

The consultants concluded that rural electrification could take place only under the following circumstances: 1) if low–voltage distribution lines to the villages were grant–funded; 2) if the LEC changed its tariff structure to allow for load–limited, flat–rate usage; 3) if a credit facility was put in place to help consumers pay for connection fees and new appliances; and 4) if, in the interest of cost–efficiency, each participating household installed an expensive "heat storage cooker" (a pilot project to test the cookers budgeted $400 for each unit installed).⁶ Unfortunately, the low density of the villages and the even lower density of people able to pay for the scheme increased connection costs prohibitively. The LEC had just cancelled its load–limit tariff scale in an effort to boost profits. The credit facility never materialized. And the unfamiliar "heat storage cookers" were not popular with highlands communities. Even the World Bank (one of the LHWP’s funders) recognized the futility of the program, declaring, "the fact is that even if transmission lines were available, most people wouldn't be able to afford to pay for the connection."⁷

Nevertheless, LHDA adopted the plan and in 1998 attempted to implement it in the village of Ha Kennan on the banks of Katse Reservoir. At great cost, project workers erected utility poles and strung transmission lines over rough terrain to a transformer on the outskirts of the village. That is where the project ended. LHDA officials told the village residents that they must now "take the initiative" and ask the LEC to connect them to the transformer. They told the village that each participating household would bear the costs of new appliances, the connecting fee, and additional $2000 utility poles.⁸ Not surprisingly, the transformer stands unused amidst a sparse collection of thatched, mud and stone huts while villagers continue to gather brushwood and dung to fuel their fires.

Project authorities admitted in December 1999 that the "rural electrification program has not yet been implemented."⁹ Nor will it ever be, barring an extraordinarily expensive, donor–funded electricity program. Now, ten years after the pledge was made, affected people’s hopes of electricity have faded. It is just another promise not kept.

The author spent 1997–2000 living in a village affected by the LHWP and working as an
LHWP community advocate with the Lesotho–based Transformation Resource Center.

Footnotes:

¹ Treaty on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project Between the Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Government of the Republic of South Africa. Maseru. October 24, 1986. p. 27.
² LHDA. LHWP Rural Development Plan Phase 1A, Volume 8: Village Infrastructure. Maseru. July 1990. p. 1.
³ Bureau of Statistics. Income, Expenditure and Consumption of Basotho Households. Maseru. October, 1988.
⁴ LHDA, p. 7.
⁵ Ibid., p. 21.
⁶ Ibid., p. 25.
⁷ World Bank. Lesotho Highlands Water Project Back to Office Report. Washington, DC. April 4, 1994, Annex 5, p. 11.
⁸ LHDA Katse Field Operation Branch staff member. Personal communication. 1998.
⁹ Mochebelele, R.T. and O.M. Letsela. LHWP – Concerns and Benefits of Dams Including the Environmental and Social Impacts and the Associated Mitigation Measures for Sustainability. Paper presented to the World Commission on Dams 3rd Regional Consultation, Cairo, Egypt. December 8–9, 1999, p. 15.