The road to ruin – Sanral’s new route to Durban
Words by: Barry Sergeant. Article from Noseweek Magazine August 2015.
Sanral and its cronies are determined to build a wildly expensive new route to Durban, when sensible repairs would do the trick
As South Africa’s democracy “matures”, so the legacies of all kinds of interesting prior relationships continue to ripen. One project that cannot escape attention is the proposed N3 highway bypass that will effectively turn Harrismith into yet another South African ghost town, consigning thousands of people to unemployment, and tens of thousands of their dependants to destitution. That’s apart from the extra billions that it’s going to cost the South African road user.
If state roads agency Sanral and its crony road construction companies have their way, the N3 will be routed down an entirely redesigned and reconstructed De Beer’s Pass, rather than the existing Van Reenen Pass at Harrismith, as the gateway across the escarpment. If this project proceeds, an estimated R5 billion (more likely R10bn by the time it’s completed) will have to be found to fund the rerouting of the N3 highway between Johannesburg and Durban.
For all this expense, the loss of farmland, the devastation of nature and countless freshly unemployed and destitute people, the new highway between Johannesburg and Durban will be just 14km shorter.
What it certainly will do is generate lucrative contracts for South Africa’s notoriously scheming “Big Five” road construction companies. It might also just save the country’s most hated parastatal, Sanral, from the embarrassment of not being able to upgrade the existing
Van Reenen Pass because it has blown all its funds – and credibility – on its Gauteng e-tolls fiasco – the only possible explanation for the fact that at no stage has serious consideration been given to further upgrading the existing N3, which, common sense dictates, would be the most logical option.
Following a “public tender” process, the now uber-popular South African National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) in 1998 appointed the N3 Toll Concession (N3TC) as the concessionaire responsi-ble for maintaining the Johannesburg- Durban N3 highway.
The 30-year concession, which began on 2 November 1999, is for maintenance only. The capital costs of upgrades and extensions remain for Sanral’s account, but for reasons never made clear, the concession contract included a “require-ment” that the concessionaire must construct a new route known as the De Beer’s Pass Route (DBPR), between Keeversfontein and Warden. Based on the original contract, building of this monumental 97.7km new mountain pass highway, essentially duplicating an existing, perfectly good stretch of highway, should have commenced in 2013 and taken 3.5 years to complete.
Landscape architecture firm Cave Klapwijk & Associates of Hatfield, Pretoria, was commissioned by the concession holders to produce a scoping report, which they did in a 90-page document in February 2011. Only at the last moment and as an afterthought was the possibility of “upgrading” the existing highway added to the scoping study. This is only one of many pieces of dodgy work associated with the DBPR.
The market-studies firm Demacon was likewise contracted to conduct a regional economic assessment of the proposed DBPR. They published a 168- page report in December 2011. Professor Lochner Marais of the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State argues that the assessment is “substandard” and is the work “more of an undergraduate assignment than a specialist report”.
Professor Wessel Pienaar, Head of the Department of Logistics at the University of Stellenbosch, was commissioned by Cave Klapwijk to prepare an Economic Impact Assessment of the proposed De Beer’s Pass Route. The 55-page document, which appeared in March 2014, finds Pienaar concluding that the proposed DBPR “is economically justified”, and “among the technically feasible alternatives it ranks best from an economic viewpoint”. There is only a fleeting reference to the possibility of upgrading the existing N3. In his economic assessment he manages to ignore the costs (to the state roads agency) of having to continue to operate and maintain the existing highway as an alternative route, after the proposed new parallel N3 highway is built.
The main opposition to the proposed De Beer’s route has come from the Harrismith Business Forum, which unequivocally supports upgrading of the existing N3, and opposes the rerouting of the highway through the De Beer’s Pass.
In the Cave Klapwijk EIA, commissioned by N3TC, the potential impact on Harrismith of rerouting the highway away from the town is dealt with in just two sentences: “The economic impact of the proposed DBPR on the town economy of Harrismith is expected to be small. A probable loss of 20 retail related jobs will occur,” it claims, without any further explanation or reference to actual research to show how this figure is reached. By all accounts it’s a thumbsuck designed to gloss over the problem.
By contrast, in a detailed economic impact report prepared for the business forum by Mike Schussler, it is calculated on the basis of accepted economic models, that Harrismith faces a direct employment loss of 747 jobs and a total employment loss of 1,663 jobs.
The forum commissioned a team of specialists to review the many studies that form part of the Draft EIA report penned by Cave Klapwijk. The forum argues that “the respective specialist review studies clearly indicate that the proposed DBPR project is economically and environmentally unsustainable”.
One of the experts who consulted to the forum, Mary-Jane Morris, of Morris Environmental & Groundwater Alliances, says “in environmental terms we talk about irreversible impacts. From an ecological point of view, this bypass has several negative irreversible impacts”.
For example, Morris explains that once a wetland (through which the road will pass) is lost, damaged or affected in a way that alters its natural functioning, “humankind, cannot do anything to get these systems back to what they were or even anything close to what they were”.
As such, says Morris, “the only way to prevent these impacts is to not build the road. Various deviations have been considered but the difference in impact between the route with deviations and the original route is not material. The ecological changes that will result from building the road are forever”.
Morris argues that “this proposed road cannot be justified on any level, environmentally speaking”. She adds that there is also a “high level” of certainty that these negative irreversible impacts will occur based on scientific analysis.
She argues that the “economic impacts” (more specifically the supposed economic costs and benefits) are less certain due to the nature of economics. She notes that we have seen how the Eskom situation impacts on economic growth projections, the effect of the weakness of the rand, etc. “As I see economics”, she says, “changes are far less easy to predict and it takes only one negative factor to enter the picture (e.g. the rand strengthens; the fuel price decreases) and the whole economic picture changes”.
Morris says that in terms of economics there was “no sensitivity analysis undertaken from what I could see in the documentation”.
This point is also made by roads expert Bernal Floor, who explains that the drop in world price of crude oil substantially reduces the benefits predicted for the shorter route. “As such,” argues Morris, “we have no insight into how changes in the economic environment would affect the ‘rosy’ economic picture painted in the economic impact assessment.
“So, as a country, we are being asked to trade off irreversible negative environmental impacts (such as affecting the wetlands that feed streams and rivers and ultimately the Gauteng water supply) that have a high level of certainty of occurring, with economic benefits that are uncertain, difficult to predict and therefore somewhat nebulous. Does this sound like a ‘good deal’? I think not,” is his expert opinion.
It seems that almost everything that touches promotion of the proposed DBPR ends up on some kind of rack. Cullinan & Associates, environmental attorneys with headquarters in Cape Town (and representing the business forum), have filed a letter with the environmental ministry, strenuously questioning the independence of Alan Cave from Cave Klapwijk as the environmental assessment practitioner commissioned in this case. Cave has no comment.
Looking at the bigger picture, cynics would, of course, find it difficult to forget that Mac Maharaj was transport minister during the period when the N3TC concession was awarded — and resigned to become FirstRand’s highest-paid director shortly afterwards. FirstRand was a major financing partner in the N3TC concession (See nose47). And that in February 2003 the Sunday Times aired allegations that Zarina, wife of Mac Maharaj, had received more than R500,000 between May 1998 and February 1999 from Schabir Shaik, a businessman who was later convicted of fraud and corruption. Tender documents confirm that Shaik’s company, Nkobi Holdings, was a 3% shareholder of the N3TC when it won the bid.
Ironically, some experts believe it’s doubtful whether the N3TC will derive any benefit from the clause in the Concession Contract that requires it to build the DBPR, and to bear most of the cost.
Says Floor: “I believe the N3TC might be pleased to be relieved of its obligation, which today amounts to about R3 billion of the total outlay”. Back in 1998, it was widely believed that Sanral’s motivation was to squeeze a clause into the Concession Contract enabling it to avoid having to bear the cost of upgrading Van Reenen’s Pass, which would become essential in the not-too-distant future.
But then again that theory ignores the fact that road construction costs, plus handsome amounts of interest, are recovered by the N3TC and its financiers by levying higher toll fees. For the motorist, savings on reduced fuel consumption are instantly lost to higher toll fees.
But then again, maybe since the Gauteng e-tolls disaster, perhaps a fat increase in toll fees on the N3 isn’t quite the easy option it once was?
Should Sanral have been “too clever by half’ in not providing for the possibility that environmental permission to build the DBPR might not be granted – as Floor suggests – and should such permission in fact be refused, the N3TC would be absolved of its obligation to build – and pay for – the DBPR, and a currently financially strained Sanral will be left with all the costs of upgrading the existing route. Whatever the reason, good or devious, Sanral is lashing out and doing whatever it takes to tiy to ensure that environmental permission to build the DBPR is granted.
It appears that in their depravity, Sanral and its political masters are determined to ensure that the penalty for their corruption and financial mismanagement will be paid not by themselves, but by the people of Harrismith, road users and nature never mind that the people of Harrismith, road users and nature will be paying that massive penalty for the entire foreseeable future.
|
Subscribe to NoseweekIf you enjoy following excellently-researched investigations and true stories, why not subscribe for a sobering read? Give a Gift SubscriptionLooking for a gift for someone interested in news they’re not supposed to know? Let them receive a copy of this great magazine from you every month. Latest Issue of NoseweekSee what’s in the latest exciting issue of Noseweek. |