Competencias Laborales del (la) Trabajadora social

4.8.1. SKILLS FLIGHT AND LACK OF SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE

TRANSFER

The loss of intellectual assets is a major threat to effective water management and subsequently normative convergence, particularly in water-scarce countries such as South Africa where the onus is on the scientific community to find technological solutions (Turton, 2008a: 180-200; Walwyn and Scholes, 2006: 239-243). There has been a large skills flight in southern Africa in recent years due to increased crime, lack of confidence in

70 _{Biggs, D. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Heyns, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Interview with}

Shilomboleni, A. (2008) Chief Hydrological Technician. Namibian Hydrological Services, MAWF, Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia, 3 September, 2008: Appendix 2A; Interview with Philander, R. (2008) Attorney, LorentzAngula, Former Principal Legal Officer for ORASECOM, Ministry of Justice, Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia, 10 September 2008: Appendix 2A.

the government, and social mobility. The mobility of skilled people is however widespread and varies in nature. Water specialists in African countries often emigrate to apply their trade in developed countries, but also move to international and multi-national organisations. Similarly, South Africa attracts significant capacity, particularly from Zimbabwe, where highly skilled people seek economic security.

The repercussions for the water sector include high staff turn-over, the loss of skills and institutional memory due to the departure of experienced staff, little or no career path and succession planning, the appointment of non-technical personnel to management positions requiring technical experience, as well as the absence of well structured educational and training programmes suitably targeted to all stakeholders in the water management chain (Mwendera, et al., 2003: 761-778). These factors impact institutional effectiveness as it involves a large degree of re-learning and re-building of trusting relationships. This problem is not however unique to South Africa with neighbouring states experiencing the same challenges. This in turn affects the institutional capacity and effectiveness of transboundary institutions such as river basin organisations where to a large extent, certain individuals who have represented their countries on both bilateral and multilateral fora, created an institutional vacuum when they left.71 The lack of sustainable knowledge transfer policies therefore impedes normative convergence due to the time it takes to re-learn and rebuild a national, basin-wide or regional culture.

Institutional memory loss is therefore a major obstacle to institutional development but also to normative convergence. A Water Research Commission (WRC) report concluded that institutional memory loss results in negative impacts on service delivery and opportunities for co-operation, particularly where mechanisms to institutionalise individuals’ knowledge have not been put in place (Pegram, Mazibuko, Hollingworth and Anderson, 2006). Moreover, the lack of sustainable knowledge transfer policies contribute to norm resistance, not because individuals actively resist a normative pull, but because they lack an awareness of such convergence taking place. This consideration is critical to a Constructivist understanding of the problem by emphasising the significance of individual

71 _{Interview with Van Langenhove, G. (2008) Head of Hydrological Services, MAWF, Namibia, Windhoek,}

Namibia, 2 September 2008: Appendix 2A; Van Wyk, N. (2008) Chief Engineer: National Water Resource Planning (East), Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Pretoria, South Africa, 13 August 2008: Appendix: 2C; Heyns, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Pyke, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Roberts, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Shilomboleni, A. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A.

identities on both personal relationships and institutional capacity. As Checkel argues, the environment in which agents/states take action is social as well as material and this setting can provide agents/states with understandings of their interests and can in fact “constitute them” (Checkel, 1998: 325-326).

4.8.2. LACK OF TRUST

A key aspect of the above-mentioned barrier is the process of trust-building and how this is facilitated as well as the importance of individual actors and personal relationships in the management of freshwater resources, producing both positive and negative repercussions. Trust in this case can be divided into institutional trust (the trust individuals have of an institution’s functionality i.e. ability to carry out its mandate) and individual trust (the trust that develops between individuals’ interactions with each other).

National departments and river basin commissions alike have had water resources managers and planners that have held their positions for years, and have in recent years retired, or are fast approaching retirement age.72 In South Africa, others have been replaced or made redundant as a result of Black Economic Empowerment policies. While on the one hand, the interpersonal relationships they formed have enabled a trusting environment due to personal trust between individuals, on the other hand, little or no new managers and policy-makers have been sufficiently trained and equipped to fill these positions. Since institutions need to have a life after individuals, this creates a skills vacuum when new managers are hired without adequate succession planning and skills transfer policies in place to groom individuals.73

It is important to note that while political trust has not been essential for technical co-operation to take place and be successful in the Orange-Senqu River basin, and also the SADC region, it does make for better co-operative management strategies as a result of personal relationships. Due to the strategic nature of water for southern Africa, it can be argued that transboundary co-operative management in southern Africa has had a very strong technical component (Joint Permanent Technical Commission, Tripartite Permanent Technical Committee, JWC, PWC, etc). Even before 1994, in a period of severe political

72 _{Heyns, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Pyke, P. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A; Roberts, P. (2008)}

Interview: Appendix 2A; Thamae, L. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A.

instability and distrust of South Africa’s economic hegemony and military aggression, there was a high degree of technical co-operation i.e. hydrological exchange of information and collaboration. Despite distrust among riparian states at that time, technical co-operation existed as a means to overcome the political incapacity to engage.

The second aspect of trust relates to institutional trust or the confidence individuals have in an institution’s functionality. It is hypothesised that an increase in institutional trust influences individuals to accept institutionalised norms that have emerged as part of institutional fabric. Qualitative research conducted revealed that several technical water managers in Namibia, South Africa and Lesotho, perceive the practical co-operation on the exchange of hydrological data to have disappeared with the introduction of international river basin commissions.74 “The reason is that there are now top-heavy structures that need excuses for meetings and international travelling and studies. Instead of exchanging data, all energy is spent on discussing the exchange of data and writing reports on that subject.”75 Examples cited were the Kavango and Zambezi, where managers argued that there was never any problem getting Kavango data from Botswana before OKACOM was established.76 This could be translated into the opposition to the formalisation of information exchange channels which are time-consuming. These sentiments reflect a lack of trust in multilateral institutions to effectively perform their mandates, and as such, may be a barrier to the development of a “community of interests.” This sentiment is not shared by several other decision-makers, however. According to Heyns (2009), the real problem is not so much the existence of the institution (OKACOM), but rather the capacity of Botswana to provide the information, which relates more to the aforementioned barrier, skills flight.77 “The OKACOM always encouraged the exchange of information and there was never any requirement that information had to pass through the Commission, in fact, the Commission always encouraged co-operation at the lowest appropriate level between the various water departments.”78

74 _{Van Langenhove, G. (2008) Interview: Appendix 2A.} 75 _Ibid.

76 _Ibid.

77 _{Heyns, (2009) e-mail correspondence: Appendix 4.} 78 _Ibid.

4.9.

DRIVERS FOR NORM CONVERGENCE IN THE ORANGE-