The water warriors
The inconvenient truths about our polluted water supplies aren’t going unchallenged — at least not by these activists.
The principled insider
Carin Bosman worked for the Department of Water Affairs both before and after 1994 and has the unassailable distinction of having pissed off people on both sides of that political divide.As an independent consultant these days, her technical knowledge, coupled with her managerial ability and first-hand experience of “the politics of pollution”, has seen her drawn into some of the biggest environmental scraps of the day, such as the ongoing Vele Colliery debacle in Limpopo, where she hopes that her evaluation of Coal of Africa’s environmental management programme report will contribute to the closure and rehabilitation of the mine.
“The only change since 1994 in regard to the politics of pollution has been skin colour,” says Bosman. “You may recall we had a racing car in Formula One. That was the politics of pollution at work. Sasol knew that the minister at the time, Gert Kotze, was a big racing car fan and when its environmental impact came under scrutiny my colleagues were told to lay off and the next thing, South Africa had this car.” (Sasol was the title sponsor of the Jordan Grand Prix team during the 1992, 1993 and 1994 Formula One World Championship seasons.)
In 2005, as director of water resource protection and waste management at the department of water affairs, Bosman was instrumental in getting a number of big-name gold mines in the vicinity of Klerksdorp to share the cost of groundwater pumping operations at mines that had been liquidated by DRD Gold to keep the shafts from flooding and creating a massive acid mine drainage problem in the process.
“It was the first time the strength of section 19 of the National Water Act was ever tested and it passed the tests,” says Bosman, adding that South Africa has excellent liability laws. Her wrangles with mining managing directors were nothing compared with the battles fought in the corridors of the department itself, however. “I was under severe pressure to let these guys off the hook—it was very hard,” says Bosman, who was shown the door after butting heads with the director general.
“I used to work for SA.gov but I now work for SA.org through my company, Sustainable Solutions. My focus is still on communities, and I don’t beat around the bush. We need as many people as possible to keep pointing out that the politics of pollution are actually killing us.”
Source: The water warriors
