St Lucia farmers clarify their position

IN a statement released last week, Umfolozi Sugar Planters (UCOSP) endeavoured to set the record straight after ‘recent misleading press releases by iSimangaliso management’ on the ongoing High Court battle over the breaching of the Mfolozi River mouth.

A previously healthy relationship, spanning decades of neighbourly co-existence between farming families and former Lake St Lucia conservation authorities turned sour in recent years under iSimangaliso CEO Andrew Zaloumis and Business Director Terri Castis, who UCOSP deems to have demonstrated total disregard for the rights of the sugarcane farming community through ‘ongoing intimidation tactics’.

This has left farmers no option but to request High Court intervention to clarify the legal status of the situation.

According to the statement, erosion and a lack of dams on the Mfolozi River have caused varied flow patterns and increased silt, previously considered harmful to the functioning of the estuary system, and, since the 1950s, the conservation authority’s strategy was to keep the river and estuary artificially separate.

An iSimangaliso study published in 2012 now deems Mfolozi River water vital for the future sustainability of the Lake St Lucia estuary system.

The statement went on to say, ‘UCOSP and its members participated in this research project as key stakeholders and have learned to understand the outcomes of the project as announced by iSimangaliso to essentially undo the prior conservation strategy and remove the 60+ year old unnatural man-made dredged barrier to allow the reconnecting of the Mfolozi River system with Lake St Lucia and … offered iSimangaliso support and assistance to implement the revised strategy [which did not] mention [the risk to farmland] of repeated back-flooding, as the intention was to encourage a combined open mouth system, expected to remain tidal’.

The statement also said iSimangaliso management has repeatedly publicised this reconnection of the Mfolozi River water into the Lake St Lucia system as not only critically important for the longer term sustainability of Lake St Lucia but especially urgent under the prevailing drought conditions, yet they have done very little to progress this revised strategy since the announcement in July 2012.

Instead, feeble attempts have been made to redirect river water via the ‘beach channel’, while a major sand blasting project to remove a portion of the unnatural man-made dredged barrier was meant to have been completed during 2015.

This, UCOSP says, has caused unnecessary repeated back-flooding and millions of Rands of crop damage.

Cost to farmers

When the river mouth closed naturally in January 2015, UCOSP assisted iSimangaliso in re-establishing its beach channel, at substantial cost to the farmers, which iSimangaliso had not maintained.

‘UCOSP and its members would be only too happy for all the Mfolozi River water to flow into the estuary,’ said the statement.

It says iSimangaliso’s ‘management inertia’ has prevented this and the solution rests entirely in iSimangaliso management’s hands.

The parties will present their arguments to Judge Moodley at the High Court on 19 May.

Until then, an interim court order issued in October, as agreed by both parties, requires iSimangaliso to breach the river to the sea within 24 hours when back-flooding levels reach 1.2msl

UCOSP said this court order was defied by iSimangaliso management in December and a date for the action to be heard will soon be set.

The statement concludes that UCOSP and its members look forward to receiving legal clarity from the High Court in order to bring an end to the ongoing bullying and intimidation tactics being applied by iSimangaliso management who, while failing dismally in attending to their duty in managing this crisis situation, are wasting state funds defending their unprofessional conduct in the High Court.

The detailed press release is posted on UCOSP website www.ucosp.co.za.