This dried the wetland out, and only in the 1990s Rand Water started a rehabilitation programme to restore the wetland. Part of their motivation was due to the realisation that clean water could be supplied more cost-effectively by forgoing chemical and mechanical treatment, and rather letting the wetland push its water back into the Vaal River where it augmented the water scheme already in place. The whole project cost over two million Rand and ongoing efforts continue to improve the situation. "Working for Wetlands" is a program supported by three separate government ministries (Water Affairs, Agriculture and Tourism). Headed in the Memel area by an engineer from Zimbabwe, Working for Wetlands annually employs between 30-90 unskilled workers who build gabions (rocks placed in wire retaining cages) and weirs to slow erosion and resurrect marshland. Demography This part of South Africa was inhabited by the San people for thousands of years before the Bantu and European migrants arrived and it was inhabited by Bantu peoples for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. When settlers of Dutch and British descent encountered the area in the nineteenth century, the year-round flow of the nearby Klip river and the plentiful game to be found in the area likely inspired their decision to establish a settlement there. This community gradually grew until the town of Memel was officially proclaimed in 1914. The character of Memel was, for most of its written history, that of a typical, isolated, agricultural community where apartheid and the Dutch Reformed Church were a dominant feature in peoples lives. While these are still evident today, the town has undergone a slow but sure metamorphosis since the birth of democracy in 1994. Within the last fifteen years Zamani has expanded rapidly. This explosion, initially in the form of hundreds of shacks, is the result of people no longer being satisfied with governments slow pace of the promised expansion beyond the original, apartheid boundaries of the township, and so, taking matters into their own hands, they gradually built new, small homes for themselves in the surrounding fields. Their direct action was successful with government hastily surveying the area and officially proclaiming, at very low cost, plots on which people could build their homes. A respectable minority of these shacks have been privately replaced by brick and concrete block construction. Concerned philanthropists have built a model community (slated for completion early in 2015), based