The global Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on our daily work programmes.
Certainly, digital technologies have made breakthroughs.
The eight forums serving the Upper Vaal only missed the quarterly meeting of May 2020 – during the countrywide shutdown.
It certainly is an accomplishment for a formal water quality monitoring system that has now been operational for 21 years.
Water forums started up in the 1990’s when the global water sector accepted Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) as water management guideline.
It meant ordinary people now had the right to be privy to planning and decisions on water matters.
In fact, our country’s sub-catchment forums are a symbol of IWRM that gained global traction at the time of the United Nations (UN) 2002 Global Sustainable Development Conference in Johannesburg.
As young democracy and lawful members of the global family of states in the UN, South Africa’s water sector leaders promoted and secured support for IWRM from most of more than 190 member states of the UN.
We were trend setters at the time. Our National Water Act (1998) was a benchmark for many states.
Moreover, the basic human right to clean water and a healthy environment, ensconced in South Africa’s Constitution (1996) has since become an international golden standard.
Whilst attending August 2021’s Upper Vaal forum meetings, I once again became aware of the dedication of regional water workers and their reporting on water quality monitoring data. There remain obstacles to consistently secure water’s appropriate environmental health.
At least the regular monitoring of water resources informs us on the health of our river catchments in the upper Vaal.
Digital technology now enables us to communicate from home, or semi-operational office complexes.
We are now inter-connected with the press of a computer button.
Yet, there is something amiss.
I found one missing link in the communications process, in the minutes of the Leeu-Taaiboschspruit forum of August 2020 – the forum’s first online meeting after the countrywide shutdown.
Two members, Bob Kleynjan of Sasol and his peer, Willem de Klerk, at Eskom, participated in a discussion on a research project on the flow of the salt content in the Vaal River Barrage.
Sasol, Eskom and the Water Research Commission financed the research work by a Rhodes University expert team.
During the forum meeting, De Klerk explained to Kleinyan, they had to make a point of meeting on the project.
What was unique about the brief discourse (noted in the minutes) was that two forum stakeholders needed to have a private talk.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, forum members customarily had a post-meeting lunch together.
Insignificant as it may seem, these events have over the years, become a communication space where stakeholders conduct important informal talks.
As valuable as they are in an era of pandemic, digital meeting platforms do not create an ambience, where basic instincts of human chatter and social engagement, powered by intricate short-term memories of meeting talks, stimulate future management thinking.
Maybe some have meanwhile digitally resolved the glitch. Rest assured; members will meet again in person.
Until then, they must settle for a 10-minute comfort break to grab a cup of tea/coffee before talks resume.
* The author is an extraordinary professor in the Faculty of Humanities at North-West University’s Vanderbijlpark Campus.
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