Where do you think your water comes from?Who pays the price?

Water doesn’t come from a tap. It comes from people making sacrifices somewhere far away.

Far enough away that you don’t have to face their reality. That’s why people continue to have green lawns and swimming pools, even though the country is dancing around the prospect of a third year of drought.

That’s why Johannesburg Water and other utilities have to threaten fines to get people to conserve water.

The reality that we live in a waterscarce, or semiarid, country seems to be completely missed by the middle and upper classes.

If your lawn is green, you are taking water away from people who now have to slaughter their cattle or find a way to eat less maize. But you can get away with it, because you can afford to pay more for water.

The national government gives 6 000 litres of free water to homes each month. That’s calculated to be enough to cover basic use.

Middle-class homes in big metros use up to 30 000 litres a month. Most of this water comes from an excellent storage network, built over decades to ensure that South Africa can survive droughts.

A handful of dams around Lesotho catch and store water, giving South Africa’s nearby provinces a buffer for the regular drought cycles.

This week, the Mail & Guardian reports on the Lesotho arm to that storage network. Starting in 1986, the small mountain kingdom has had its valleys dammed and turned into reservoirs.

The billions of litres of water that fall on its high peaks are collected and then sent to South Africa.

That water is the reason the current drought has not broken South Africa.

But the Vaal Dam, where the water ends up, is now at only 30% storage capacity.

The rainy season for 2016 is late and the South African Weather Service is loath to predict the arrival of any serious rainfall before Christmas. That’s why water utilities in Gauteng have implemented water restrictions. They need to lower consumption by 15% or face water blackouts.

Lesotho’s water sacrifices are the only reason you can still get water from your tap.

In exchange, the income for selling water generates 10% of that country’s government coffers. This, it says, means schools can be built and development can be rolled out into the rural areas around dams.

People living near Katse Dam tell the M&G that development is not in their reach. New roads and electricity infrastructure have been built, so that developers could build the dams.

In Katse village, next to the 185m tall wall of its namesake dam, a reservoir was built so low down in the village that it can provide water to only one tap.

That tap supplies the area with water, and every day people trek for kilometres with buckets to collect it. That water keeps their cattle alive.

But it does little for the grass the now emaciated cattle need to survive. It also does little for maize crops — most of Lesotho’s agriculture is rain-fed.

No significant rain has fallen since late 2013.

Another year of drought looms. Yet farmers around Katse have started ploughing their fields, in the hope that it does rain. Those rains are already two months late.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Lesotho will need food assistance until at least April 2017.

All of this takes place while billions of litres of water flow out of the country.

The water you take for granted and waste comes at a high cost. Value it. —