African Wildlife and Environment Issue 67

GENERAL

MESSAGE TO MEMBERSHIP

The SAWC will shortly present the report to the Portfolio Committee on Water & Sanitation. As a first step, SAWC recently addressed a letter to the Minister to strongly object to the decision to consolidate the established and planned CMAs into a single national agency. The letter highlighted that this decision “would fly in face of existing national water policy that provide for the decentralisation of and public participation in water governance” and hence called for the Minister to “keep the nine CMAs intact”. SAWC has received no response to this call. For comment on the State of the Department of Water and Sanitation report, please contact: • Samson Mokoena, Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance, on samson.mokoena@gmail.com or 016 933 9079 / 084 291 8510 • Mariette Liefferink, Federation for a Sustainable Environment, on mariette@pea.org.za or ) 011 465 6910 / 073 231 4893 • Thabo Lusithi, Environmental Monitoring Group, on thabo@emg.org.za or 021 448 2881 • Saul Roux, Centre for Environmental Rights, on sroux@cer.org.za or 021 447 1647 / 082 777 9904 • Bryan Ashe, KZN Water Caucus, on earthbryan@ gmail.com or 031 261 6524 / 082 652 1533 • December Ndhlovu, Environmental Monitoring Group, on joseph@emg.org.za or 082 601 3664

Thommie Burger

I would like to congratulate all involved with the new African Wildlife & Environment Magazine for producing content that appears to be relevant and appreciated by most, if not all of the targeted readership. Well done! During 2017, the WESSA Board approved the new status of the WESSA regional representatives and ExCo committee, known as the RR/ExCo Committee, as a fully-fledged board committee. Jenny Gon is the Chairperson of this committee and the most important term of reference is to deliberate about the future of the WESSA membership, under the title: Membership 2020 Vision. I want to thank Jenny and all the Regional representatives and regional chairpersons for the amount of time they have invested to participate and planwith the ExCo teamaround the various challenges we are facing with the future of membership. I remain convinced that the WESSA membership at local level, or what has come to be known as LIFE (Local Initiatives for the Environment), is very important forWESSA. Looking at the various initiatives that the regions, branches and affiliated Friends Groups are engaged in, one can clearly see that there is still a passion for caring for the earth from all our geographic regions. I want to sincerely thank all our passionate volunteers, members, supporters and friends groups for your dedication and support. I am of the opinion that we will see progressive change and improvement during 2018, which will place our LIFE on a new trajectory of growth and participation we have not seen in a long time. I wish you a prosperous and exciting Caring for the Earth 2018.

The Editorial team wishes all our readers a happy and fulfilling New Year.

Dr John Ledger Consulting Editor john.ledger@wol.co.za

3 | African Wildlife & Environment | 67 (2017)