SA’s thirst empties a Lesotho
Water is sold to South Africa but the drought has increased demand, dropping Katse Dam’s level. Now the fields and the village on its banks are dry
Water, netball and basketball are the three pillars of evening life in Katse village, Lesotho. The basketball is played on a floodlit court built for the construction workers who built the nearby Katse Dam. Netball takes place on a field flattened by running feet and the game ends when the sun sets.
About 40 women take part in the netball game, either in playing or resolving disputes from the sidelines. During one argument over whether someone ran too far with the faded white ball, one player says: “We don’t really play by international rules.”
The noise of both sports echoes across the village, mixing with the sound of cattle bells. It then bounces off the 2 400m mountains that form Katse’s southern boundary. Katse Dam, with its sheer drop to water level, creates the other boundary. That leaves a 2km strip of rocky ground for farming and people’s homes.
Fields take up most of the land. About 75% of the local population relies on rain-fed agriculture. Katse village is squished into a small area along the spine of one of the ridges that rise into the mountains. The ground is too rocky for crops and frost restricts vegetable gardens.
With night settling in, the ball players join the rest of the villagers to queue for water at the only working tap. The reservoir was built too low down to get water to the forever-dry taps higher up at people’s homes. Dozens of white, green and yellow water containers reserve spots in the queue. Most are carried by children, who can barely lift the containers off the ground. A fortunate few strap containers on to donkeys or load them on to wheelbarrows. Three battered bakkies take water to homes more than a kilometre from the tap.
“They promised when they built the dam that we would get water all over the village,” says Nchai Sitsane, who wears a baseball cap, more to match his American-style get-up than for any practical reason. He doesn’t make a concession to the biting wind, leaving his jacket unbuttoned. “But our parents didn’t follow up and make sure that happened, so here we are.”
His father, a miner in South Africa, died — as did his mother — before water came to the village’s lone tap.
“Life here is about survival, more than about making it.”
Sitsane stops talking to look at the dam, now a dark strip to the north. It is the result of a 1986 agreement between Lesotho and South Africa. The latter had to solve a problem: the economic hub of Gauteng needed water and getting it uphill from KwaZulu-Natal would use up too much electricity. Lesotho had lots of water — from summer rainfall and winter snow on its 3 800m mountain peaks — but no dams. The 185m Katse Dam wall, which curves across a valley where two rivers meet, was the result of the agreement.
Lesotho gets about R700-million a year from selling that water — 10% of government revenue. The government says the money has meant new schools, roads and electricity in previously cut-off communities. Turbines in the system generate 75 megawatts of electricity, almost enough to power the entire country.
But people in Katse say they have seen little benefit from selling their water. Rain, in any volume, last fell in 2013. The worst drought in living memory has ensued, wiping out two season’s worth of crops. That streak looks set to continue. El Niño — which drove the drought in the southern hemisphere — has faded away and Nasa predicts that its wet counterpart, La Niña, will probably not materialise to bring heavy rains to fill dams. The South African Weather Service says that, at best, good rains will come by Christmas. This is because the climate is changing, undoing the predictable patterns that farmers rely on.
In Katse the fields are being ploughed anyway. Four-oxen teams pull shiny metal ploughs, guided by one man while another follows, dropping seeds into the ploughed soil. A product of volcanic activity, this soil gives farmers here an advantage over their counterparts in Lesotho’s low-