RAIN IN BUSHMANLAND
In the spring of 2021, the drought-stricken parts of the Northern Cape finally received rain. It continued through summer, leaving puddles on wet soil, hiding sheep in tall grass, painting rainbows in the sky and causing farmers to sigh with relief.
“Lightning flickers over slate rock and gha grass. Closer and closer. There’s a rumble of thunder followed by the wonderful scent of raindrops on thirsty earth. An aardwolf peeks out of an aardvark den. It’s almost as if the clouds are asking for forgiveness: “Sorry it took so long. Sorry for all the pain.”
When clouds forget the way to your house, it can take a long time before you see them again. If you live far away, you can sit and wait on your stoep for years and years. Places like Bushmanland and the Upper Karoo are far from the cloud highways. Sometimes people’s gardens are withered away by the time the clouds return and give a shy kiss. But it also happens that children grow up, old people pass away and animals starve before there’s a happy reunion.
One of the most difficult places to reach is the far north of Bushmanland – a wide stretch north of the N14. The tracks in the veld are faded. Whether you drive there or float there on a thermal, you have to keep your wits about you or you’ll lose your way.
That’s why Arno Bekeer is so surprised to see me when we run into each other in March 2022 at Vuurdoodberg near Goodhouse, which is very far from pretty much anywhere. We first met each other at Romansberg, to the east of Vuurdoodberg, about two years ago. Back then, the drought was so severe that the only food Arno’s sheep and goats could find were scrawny plants cowering under rocks. Now, the once-pallid plains are covered in bushman and sour grass.
“I’ve forgotten that it can look like this,” says Arno. “We had seven, eight, nine years of drought. Or was it ten? I don’t know anymore. When it doesn’t rain for more than five years, you start to think that it never will.”
Just when he’d made peace with the desert around him, the clouds blew in.
“When the first rain fell, everything was shocked. My animals, my son, my dogs… They’d never seen rain! The green shoots and dubbeltjies that sprang up killed the sheep. It was too rich for them. They only knew twigs and stones. I keep them higher up on the ridges now, where there isn’t as much grass. They have to be weaned slowly off the suffering.”
South Africa’s recent drought was the most severe in a hundred years. That’s why I’m here, in Bushmanland, to celebrate the changes brought by the rain. From Vuurdoodberg, I head to the Klein Pella date farm on the banks of the Orange River.
All around, the veld can barely suppress its joy. The air is alive with the sound of birds. Quiver trees have drunk their fill and their trunks shine with happiness. Another 15 mm of rain falls, making streams dance through the drifts around the date farm.
Uli Wagener and I arrive at the campsite on the farm at the same time. He’s heading home to Cape Town in his Unimog after travelling here to escape his own suffering. After a divorce, he’s trying to repair his relationship with nature.
“I bought the truck in Joburg. This is my first trip and the start of a new chapter. I want to drive unknown dirt roads and stop when the day ends. I want to show my children new places and sleep under the stars.”
To celebrate the start of better seasons, we drive towards the sunset. From the roof of Uli’s truck, the evening star feels closer. On the ground, grass seeds glow white like the bright side of the moon.
We’re suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. Away from the things that squeeze the air from our bodies. The perfect place to breathe and start living again.
The next morning, Theunis Visser’s Hilux slips and slides in the mud on his farm Nuwedam, about 50 km south-east of Pofadder. Grass reaches for my hand, which is dangling from the bakkie window. In front of us, dorper sheep move towards the kraal. Only a few months ago, they spent their days lying next to the troughs, waiting for the bakkie to bring their feed. Now they’re full of renewed vigour; each weaned lamb as heavy as a bag of mielies.
This is the first time Theunis is experiencing Bushmanland in such a lush state.
“Let me tell you, there may have been good years when I was a child, but since I started farming with my dad, all I’ve known is drought. I’ve never actually done anything but feed the flocks. Now I can farm properly.”
His father Gerhard isn’t sure when last they had a fat year. “Around here you need a very good memory,” he says.
When you drive the dirt road from Kakamas to Loeriesfontein, you travel through the heart of Bushmanland – literally. On Makkiesplaas, halfway between those towns, farmer André Nel ploughed a big heart on a pan a few years ago. “You can see it from the sky if you look
on Google Maps*,” he says. “Well, you could. Now it’s all under water.” His moustache lifts into a smile.
They stopped laughing for a long time, says André’s wife Marinda. “It was a terrible drought, and the farmers were losing everything: their savings, their pensions, medical aid… Many farmers became dependent on feed donations for their animals, and on financial contributions and household items donated by people from all over South Africa.” At one stage, André and Marinda’s children invited them for a holiday on the West Coast. “I didn’t enjoy it at all,” André says. “I felt guilty. I was afraid that someone who’d donated would see me there. People would see the flip-flops, sunglasses and T-shirt and think, ‘This guy is chilling, he’s not suffering because of the drought.’”
The first rain arrived in spring last year, three days after his feed mixer broke down.
“By then, we’d used up every bit of resilience we had.”
“The rain came just in time,” Marinda adds. The sheep that could still walk were removed from the feeding kraal and sent to the veld to graze. André and Marinda planted a lawn in front of their house, built a birdcage for their budgies, and a small swimming dam next to their self-catering unit, Boesmanland Veldhuisie. They did all the things they didn’t have the time or energy for during the years when the drought came first.
Later, sitting outside Veldhuisie, I watch the Bushmanland sky darken. Lightning flickers over slate rock and gha grass. Closer and closer. There’s a rumble of thunder followed by the wonderful scent of raindrops on thirsty earth. An aardwolf peeks out of an aardvark den.
It’s almost as if the clouds are asking for forgiveness: “Sorry it took so long. Sorry for all the pain.”
All along the Sak River
The next morning, André warns me that the roads will be a mud bath. Some of the farms had 45 mm of rain last night, and the ground was already saturated. I visit Bushmanland fairly often and my path has been obstructed by rivers in flood before, but the mass of water I encounter between Makkiesplaas and Brandvlei is something else. The road has been reduced to two tracks connecting mud pool to mud pool. It’s a long drive. I don’t want it to stop because I know there are farmers in the area who will never see the landscape like this again. The Sak River is brown and loud as it rushes past Brandvlei.
On the road to Williston, ducks, Egyptian geese and African sacred ibis gather around the dams. Who told them the drought had broken? Can we say the drought has broken? It’s not a word to use lightly, especially not when bleached sheep skeletons still lie in the veld and sheds are still piled high with empty feed bags.
“Jong, no one around here wants to say that word aloud,” says Ockie van Schalkwyk, watching the Sak River flow past his farmhouse east of Williston. “The last eight years scared us all. But look at the river – it’s been in spate for weeks. I can’t remember it ever happening in the past. Usually, the river comes down in flood and empties out after a day or two. If we can’t say the drought is broken now, we’ll never be able to say it.”
Ockie farms on Vleiwerf and his house is surrounded by a sea of grass. It sways and sighs in the northerly wind that brings more dark clouds. We float through the veld in Ockie’s Mitsubishi Colt.
“The grass gets stuck under the bakkie,” he says. “The other day, it caught fire and melted all the brake hoses.
“There was nothing here a few months ago. People who didn’t see it for themselves think we’re exaggerating. How can there be nothing? It’s difficult to imagine nothing. But that’s how it was. The ground was bare. Everywhere. When I drove through here, I kept my eyes on the road. Straight ahead. I didn’t want to look around. I couldn’t.”
Ockie gets teary-eyed when he thinks back to late winter in 2021. “Sho, the end was near,” he says.
A sheep bleats as we drive past. “No man! Go graze in the veld!” Ockie shouts, hanging from the bakkie window. “I still get a fright when they bleat as if asking for food. It sends a chill down my spine!”
The dirt road from Ockie’s farm to Fraserburg is a lovely back road with expansive Karoo views. About halfway, a storm hits.
As if to make sure no one wonders whether the drought has broken or not, rain pours over the Hardemanskaroo. The R631 to Carnarvon, or the “A Road” as it’s known, becomes the Sea Road, more suited to a powerboat. My Isuzu swims and coughs its way past the farms Vastrap, Stofkraal, Bakoond and Botteldam. I sing along to David Kramer all the way,
sometimes in a panic: “Ken jy die Karoo?
Hier woon slang en akkedis. Baie jare terug was daai akkedis ’n vis. Nou kry jy skulpe in die rotse, jy kry skedels in die klei. Hierdie hele droë leegte onnerwater, glo vir my. Onnerwater… Onnerwater…”
[Do you know the Karoo? Where snakes and lizards live. Years ago, that lizard was a fish. Now you get shells in the rocks, you get skulls in the clay. This arid land was underwater, believe me. Underwater… Underwater…]
My camping plans are washed away – I have to seek shelter with my friends Juan and Janika Louw who farm west of Carnarvon. The ground on their farm is also wet, but Juan is envious when he hears how I struggled in the cloudburst between Fraserburg and Carnarvon. “Nee man, I still get the horries when I think about the drought. Every time the clouds gather but blow away, I get nervous,” says Juan. Soft rain falls overnight and soothes Juan’s nerves somewhat. His father Andries and I ride our mountain bikes through the mist and puddles, past raindrops clinging to spiderwebs. “Oeg, it’s so beautiful,” Andries says over and over again. He has lived through many droughts. “We should take more photos now. You quickly forget when it stops raining. You’ll only see it like this maybe two or three times in your life. That’s if you grow old enough. My neighbour André Venter passed away recently, while we were still waiting for the rain.” We visit André’s farm Witfontein, where the earth dam brims with water. “There’s a wooden pole in the middle of the dam,” says Andries. “That pole was bone dry in an empty dam for years. Now you can’t even see it.”
His voice cracks. “Ai, ou André… If only he could see his dam overflowing.”
Later that afternoon, a rainbow appears over the Louw farm like a prayer for the good times to continue: for dams to overflow again one day, for rain not to miss the dry spots, for sheep to bleat with joy and not hunger, for Bushmanland farmers to stroll on the beach without feeling guilty, and for children to know rain.
Please. Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika. * Look for André Nel’s Bushmanland heart on Google Maps using satellite view: S29.61658 E19.90756