Tales of woe as the dying animals bleat
FAMILIAR SCENE: The carcass of an unfortunate animal that tried to reach the putrid remnants of a dam near Ladysmith that can hold 300 000 cubic metres of water. Weakened by the drought, many get stuck in the mud and die YOU can’t escape the nauseating stench from the dead cattle; it lingers in the hot, dry, motionless air as vultures circle in the sky.
At Ladysmith, the land is so parched that the green of the water tanks dotting many homesteads is the only colour.
The northern districts of KwaZulu-Natal in particular have been ravaged by drought since early this year. Farmers and residents have watched their livestock die due to shortages of water and grass under searing temperatures that have reached 42°C.
The Red Meat Producers Organisation says the situation is dire — 40 000 head of cattle have died in the province.
One cattle owner is Xolisani Zwane. The road to Zwane’s home in Ekuvukeni, near Ladysmith, is littered with carcasses. There, cattle dealer Murray Humes, says: “This man has suffered a lot. I feel for him. His cattle wandered several kilometres from here to Elandslaagte looking for water. Some died along the way.”
Humes has been helping cattle owners by keeping their livestock in a safe area with water and baled grass.
“It hasn’t rained since November last year and the cattle feed I had stored has all run out. I have lost everything. I have lost who I am. To lose 39 head of cattle [out of 49] is something I wish for no one,” says Zwane.
He does not know where the remainder of his herd is. “I cannot keep them here. They will die, so I let them wander in the veld to look for food and water. I don’t know whether I will see them again.”
He has just spent R400 filling his 500-litre tank, but the water is just enough for his big household and smaller animals like goats and poultry. — Nathi Olifant THE clouds hang heavily above Vryburg early on Thursday, thick and grey and filled with the promise of rain — but as the wind picks up and the sun burns, not a drop falls.
By 8.30am, it is already 34°C, and another dry, scorching day becomes a reality for farmers around the North West town.
Every night, Benco van Huyssteen — whose family has farmed at O’Riley’s Pan about 20km outside of Vryburg for the past 18 years — offers the same prayer: “Liewe God, laat dit reën [Dear God, let it rain].”
But here, as in much of North West, day after day and month after month, rain has simply failed to fall. The last significant rainfall was 18 months ago, Van Huyssteen says on the banks of the main dam on the farm.
There is not a drop of water in it. Van Huyssteen recounts how his family took a canoe out on the dam last year and, three years ago, caught bass for recreation. Now the dam, almost 5km in circumference, is a dust bowl.
“At a special [church] service a month ago I was asked to close in prayer. As soon as I started talking about the rain, I got so emotional. I couldn’t even finish praying. This drought is very emotional,” he says.
He and his father, Joe, have about 230 cows between them. With the grazing pastures full of dry, yellow grass lacking nutrients, the animals are fast running out of food — and right now, the family has, at most, a month’s supply of feed left.
“The cows are getting skinny now. For farmers like us who cannot afford to buy a lot of feed, it will get worse very quickly. If there is no rain before December or January . . . the cattle will start dying.
‘‘They just lie down and cannot get up, and you have to close your eyes and shoot them.” — Matthew Savides ISRAEL Motlhabane is meant to begin planting the maize on his farm today, but this is not going to happen. The ground is just too dry.
The farmer, from Wesselsbron in the eastern Free State, is one of many in the province struggling to deal with the severe drought. The maize planting seasons starts today and runs for a month.
If significant rain does not fall quite soon, Motlhabane will have to banish thoughts of growing a mealie crop in time for harvest next year.
“If we can get 60mm to 80mm of rain a month, that’s enough to let us start working and putting crops in the ground.
“But it needs to be now, or yesterday, or even two weeks ago,” says Motlhabane.
The province has been declared a disaster area.
Motlhabane also has cattle on his farm, and the lack of rain has decimated grazing fields. He has another month, at most, for it to rain or he would have to sell his 65-strong herd.
“I’m panicking, but I still have hope that it might rain. You have to have hope, you know. If you don’t, it won’t be good for your health,” says Motlhabane, the development farmer of the year in 2012.
Henk Vermeulen, CEO of Agri Free State, says Motlhabane is not alone.
“A farmer phoned me and said: ‘Please, can’t we do something because people are thinking about suicide.’ ” — Matthew Savides THIS is the second year in a row that Limpopo is suffering with drought.
Agri Limpopo CEO Willem van Jaarsveld says the problem started when good rains earlier in the season were followed by nothing.
“The problem started and we did not realise that was the beginning of bigger problems,” he says.
The successive heatwaves are intensifying the drought. Rural farms are hit hardest as they are farming from season to season: “If these people can’t grow crops this season, they will have nothing to live on until next season,” says Van Jaarsveld.
Farmers using irrigation are fine for now, but even they might soon begin to suffer as many irrigation dams are below 30% capacity, he says. Those farms could survive for a few more months — but after that the outcome is unknown.
“If we can’t get rain in the next two weeks, it is going to be a megadisaster,” Van Jaarsveld says. — Pericles Anetos HIS fields should be green and thriving, says Gideon Anderson, but all the eye can see is red, tilled soil blowing away . . . and brown, dying grass with only a few patches of colour here and there. Nothing else. “Everything is just dust, dust, dust and we are in the middle of November,” says Anderson, a farmer in the Middelburg region of Mpumalanga.
Niels Erichsen, who farms on the neighbouring land, says he has not had a good night’s sleep in weeks.
“I have never seen it like this. We have had droughts . . . but at least we got a crop planted and the crop came up and we had grazing for our cattle. Now we have nothing. [What] we have planted is a total bugger-up,” Erichsen says.
Along with other farmers, he has planted, hoping for rain, but the few sprouts that have germinated and had green shoots are dying, he says.
“We have 400ha planted and, as they are standing like that, they are dying . . . and for a small mealie plant to die like that it is bad,” Erichsen says.
Anderson has run out of feed for his 1 030 head of cattle, which are grazing on whatever they can find — and some of his boreholes have run dry, and an entire pan of water.
“All I am doing to the cattle now is driving them to water . . . In the last week, the thing just went downhill. We were all right and coping, but in the last week . . . it is like an airplane in a nose dive.”
Mpumalanga is considered one of the more stable food producers in the country, but it is now in the same boat as the other provinces, Anderson says. — Pericles Anetos