The pipeline moving southwards

Sandy Grant | Wednesday March 18, 2015 09:55

 

Water came out of the tap when required, flush loos never dried up and swimming pools were never empty. But let’s consider a moment. Fifty years ago there could have been only a handful of homes in the entire country which enjoyed a piped water supply, and they would have been in Gaborone and Francistown. In the larger settlements elsewhere, people relied for their water supply on boreholes whilst the smaller villages were dependent on springs, pools, pans and small hand made dams. 

A village such as Odi obtained its first borehole only in 1973/4 when the Weaving project was established. It was a norm which had been established over several hundred years, that people, at no cost, went to the water. Within one person’s lifetime that norm has been reversed – because now the water comes, at great cost, to us. Then, the amount of water that could be used was limited to the amount that any one individual could carry. Today, any individual can use an almost limitless amount without making even the slightest physical effort. Then it was the job of women to fetch water from distribution points at which they had the opportunity to exchange news and information. That role has now gone, as has that particular opportunity to get updated on local affairs. In the old days, the costs related to water were relatively straightforward.

If it was extracted, an engine, pump and piping was needed plus a mounted tank.  If it was stored, it was necessary to construct a compacted dam wall. Today those costs have multiplied many times over by the need to transport water from ever increasing distances and in ever increasing quantities. The sheer drama of this enormous change, and the inevitable implications for everyone, has largely escaped us because of a startling inability to report what has been happening.  The first and most obvious culprit is the government which, having provided itself with a massively expensive means of communicating, television, has failed to make full use of it preferring to concentrate on filming the invariable high level conferences at the Gaborone Grand Palm.

The second culprit is of course the commercial press which similarly fails to report in other than routine terms. The most obvious explanation for this huge omission is that neither possesses competent journalists with a construction background.

There are now legions of economists who can comment on economic matters, educationalist on education, agriculturalist on farming and even now an ex BDF man who can comment on the army. But on construction, there seems to be no one.  It may now be that, with the BDP experiencing its first ever election set back, there will be a newfound understanding that it may be losing votes because, not least, of its past failure to use television to better effect. A daily news diet of important people discussing important topics may have been a more important negative factor in that election than is now realised.