Speaker, one of the issues that His Excellency, President Zuma, raised during the state of the nation address, was that steady progress has been made, in that more than 400 000 additional people were provided with a basic water supply last year.
While we applaud this as a step in the right direction, and while we agree that the legacy of colonial and apartheid underdevelopment cannot be completely eradicated over just 17 years of our freedom, we hope that the R2,6 billion, which has been set aside to supply the provinces of Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape, where there are still high numbers of people without drinking water, will also extend to the people of uMkhanyakude District Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal.
Last year, I raised the plight of the people of this district as the most critical, in that while this district has one of the largest dams in the country, the people of this district, even now, cannot access water from the Jozini Dam, and yet the people of the Zululand District are able to access water from the same Jozini Dam.
Much has also been said about the agricultural potential of the Makhathini Flats area, which lies just below the Jozini Dam. Yet the emerging farmers of the area cannot utilise the water from the same dam for irrigation purposes because it is alleged that, among other reasons, one politically well-connected commercial farmer has been given sole rights to the raw water from this dam to irrigate his sugarcane plantations, which stretch from the vicinity of the dam right up to uPhongolo.
For the record, Umkhanyakude District Municipality has made application after application, year after year, to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and to the local Water Boards, without success. Recently, even the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal was confronted with the problem of nonavailability of water, which negatively affects even the town of Mtubatuba and Kwamsane Township.
I pointed out last year that it seems that the people of this area are punished for not voting for the ANC, and the reality of the President's recent warning during his rally in Mthatha that voting for the opposition parties is a ticket to hell, seems to have come to pass for the people of the Umkhanyakude District. [Interjections.]