Chairperson, hon members and hon E C van Lingen, in my reply to question 5 on 17 September this year, I indicated that piping water from neighbouring countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, may be one option that we could look at to address our water supply problems.
There are, however, no plans or discussions at this stage to pipe water from the DRC to South Africa. The government's current strategy, the National Water Resources Strategy, NWRS, is to exploit our own resources by looking at options such as desalination, re-use of water, better management and use of current ground water, and to further our partnership with Lesotho in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, LHWP. I thank you.