Water For Justice

David and Goliath - TRC Monitoring the Lesotho WaterProject
	Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a huge multi-billion dollar project primarily financed by the World Bank. It is a bilateral project between the governments of South Africa and the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho whose main aim is to supply clean water to Gauteng, the thirsty industrial powerhouse of South Africa and also generate eletricity to meet Lesotho's needs. The Treaty was signed by both governments in 1986. More...
Ombudsman Hearings
	The Formal Public Hearings (FPH) by the Ombudsman in February to April 2003, was a result of hard tireless advocacy work of the TRC fieldworkers in view of addressing problems faced by the LHWP affected people. The Ombudsman office was seen by TRC as a strategic national democratic institution with constitutional powers to intervene in the case where the affected people have complaints against a public institution of the nature of LHDA. More...
Networking...
	TRC is part of the networking movement on the whole range of issues around the large dams. We network locally, regionally and internationally. Our networking NGO partners in the international arena include among others, International Rivers Network (IRN), in the USA, Campaign to Transform the World Bank, based in Italy, International Movement of Dam affected people and their Allies, currently organised from the USA, Narmada Bacheo - Save Narmada Valley in India. More...

Documentation

TRC has documented its successes and lessons in working on the LHWP issues. Documentation ranges from written to audio-visual materials. The following are but some of the written materials present at TRC: the "Since the Water Came" booklet, the research report on the LHWP impact on the Livelihoods of the affected people in Mohale area. Two other print products were published in 2005: " The Irony of the White Gold " (click here to download, pdf 322kb) and "Six Years after Resettlement".

In June 2006 we launched a book on the lessons learned from the LHWP. It is titled "On the wrong side of development". Click here for a free download (pdf, 1.4 Mb)

About the audio-visual materials present at TRC include among others: "Resettlement for Good or for Worse", "Land of our Ancestors", "LHWP has positive impacts on the lives of Basotho", and "Living with Dams - Re Phela le Matamo". Some of them were produced in English adressing a wide audience. Others were in Sesotho especially adressing the local audience.

TRC normally rents out these audio-visual materials to subscribed TRC Library members and also the Fieldworkers show these materials during their workshops.

The latest audio-visual production is a video called "We once lived there". It is a follow up of previous footage documenting the conditions of the resettled people. Today, six years after their move, they continue to fight for the promises of compensation and services made to them by the huge water proj ect. The 36 minute video and many others was produced by Don Edkins, with whom TRC has a long and successful relationship.