Strauss & co - WWF Art Auction

56 Getting to the root of our river systems and their need for flow O n climbing into Rodney’s Nissan-sponsored WWF bakkie, I noticed chunks of dried grass at the foot area and a cosy homeliness to its double-cab interior. It was indeed a field truck, donated toWWF South Africa for work on the Water Balance Programme, and judging by the mud-splattered sides of its white body, it was freshly returned from a recent trip. On the back of the vehicle, big black letters read: ‘For a water secure future’. Inside the car, Rodney introduced me to Walter – his faithful field trip companion of 22 years – a soft-toy warthog given to him by his wife and a lucky companion to have travelled South Africa and visited many mountainous regions and river catchment areas across the country. But first, let’s travel back in time. As far back as 1995, when the new South Africa was forming, Kader Asmal – then Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry – stated that it is the responsibility of all government, civil society and corporates to manage alien clearing and the resultant impact on water. WWF played a catalytic role in the process that saw government defining the national Working for Water programme. It supported a working group from a Fynbos Forum held at Nekkies, near Worcester, with taking to government a proposal for clearing alien vegetation from river ecosystems while simultaneously creating jobs that would help with poverty reduction. Around the same time, while doing a business management course in 1996, Rodney February was discovering his true passion: alien clearing. Rodney was looking into charcoal manufacture around the resultant biomass after the vegetation clearing process. His research documented a case study in Luneburg near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga, where the local biomass is re-purposed and turned into pulp and charcoal as was needed by the nearby industries working in paper and energy production. In 2000 he completed his Master’s in Environment and Development at the University of Natal with a focus on water resource management. This was heavily focused on the newWater Act released two years before in 1998. His dissertation looked at the Rondegat River in the Cederberg where he engaged with three local land-user entities to gauge their understanding of the fledging water legislation and its effects on their livelihoods and land. Conducting one-on-one interviews, he spoke to CapeNature as a key land owner, a few commercial farmers in the immediate area as the second group, and also to a land-reform community which farmed locally around the river. To Rodney’s surprise, the subsistence farmers © Chloë Swingewood © Peter Chadwick /WWF-Canon