A threatened way of life
Covid-19 is the least of the Karoo’s worries
The cracked veld of the Karoo bursts into green where the road from Prince Albert reaches farmer Pieter Olivier’s orchards. He has lost nearly half of these orchards to drought over the past five years.
“I’m much more worried about the drought than coronavirus at this stage,” says the sunburnt Olivier, putting down coffee and rusks and sitting 2m away.
The farm dam is nearly empty and the rainfall last year was about a fifth of what it used to be.
In the central Karoo, which had not a single Covid-19 case by Friday, the drought is a more immediate threat than the virus, said sheep and fruit farmers who are doing what they can to feed SA.
The drought has pushed them to the brink. Now lockdown is pushing up their costs, particularly transport, and drying up their cash flows.
“We are all in this little boat together. If we do not have each other’s backs, nobody else will,” says 47-year-old Olivier.
Temporary workers are planting onion seed while kids play hopscotch on the road.
Permanent staff could choose to lock down on the farm or in their homes in Prince Albert. Four families have stayed, says Bernita Konstabel, whose husband works in the apricot orchards while she manages staff relations.
The dirt road that crosses parched riverbeds ends 20km further on the Weltevrede fig farm, in the shadow of the Swartberg mountains. Workers are harvesting the last of the summer’s ripe figs, which are sold around the country.
A sixth-generation farmer, Liezl de Klerk says she and her family could have “locked out” the world to stay safe, but that would not have been the right thing to do.
“We are on one of the most remote farms, at a dead end. If we wanted to, we could be locked inside safely at home, but this is the time to be brave,” says De Klerk.
“Any decision we make impacts a lot of people. We have 100 seasonal workers and 30 permanent staff, who are in lockdown with us.”
Growing up on a farm once owned by her great-great-great-grandfather, De Klerk is comforted by their resilience over the centuries.
“In 1918 with the Spanish flu, they must have thought: how are we going to make it? But here we are 100 years later. This is not the first, and not the last,” she says of the global crisis.
Tourists stream to Weltevrede, as they do to many places in Prince Albert. Local and international travellers contribute to its income but the guest cottages are empty now, except for one occupied by a US couple.
They got married on the farm and came back for their anniversary, choosing to stay on when the lockdown was announced.
In another part of Prince Albert, past some olive plantations, is a sheep farm that is less secluded but seems more deserted in the late afternoon. A silky, big Alsatian called Wolf announces our arrival to farmer Joseph Steyn.
More coffee and rusks, then Steyn strides to the barn where nearly ten bales of wool and mohair are gathering dust.
“The auctions were cancelled, we can’t deliver it and the price has dropped by about a third,” says the farmer with a Clint Eastwood stare into the distance.
He cannot sell or export the wool during the pandemic but his staff, locked down on the farm, still need their wages and supplies, which he brings in from town.
It’s precarious farming in the Karoo, where each of his sheep needs about 70ha to graze, compared with regions where one hectare per sheep is enough. The situation is aggravated during the drought by predators made even hungrier.
On a board in Steyn’s barn are photos of sheep mauled and killed by jackals and caracals that have destroyed more than a third of his livestock.
Jaco Samper, who has a farm near Beaufort West, shows us a lamb with a stump for a tail. He puts lambs inside a pen after dark, but that is not always enough. His bouncy dachshund Bella is no Anatolian sheepdog guarding its flock.
About 20km out of Beaufort West this
Karoo farm, like many, depends on boreholes for irrigation.
“The drought is the biggest problem still for farmers in the Karoo,” says his neighbour Dean Gous, chair of Agri Central Karoo.
The Central Karoo’s average annual rainfall has dropped from a high of 405mm in 2012 to last year’s low of 88mm, he says.
The lockdown will hit game farms when their hunting season starts in May, he says. The game farmers need income from the venison and also the hunters to cull t herds.
Even more vulnerable in the lockdown are the children and families in the town who depend on wages and school feeding programmes for survival.
“We are two adults and a child, and we do not have food,” says Sandra Louw, whose job at Essop wholesaler is on hold. They live in the dusty settlement of Site Two, behind the big truck stop.
The main road of Beaufort West was nearly deserted this week. Most shops were closed and behind grills, the five churches silent and guesthouses were shut.
The absence during the school holidays and Easter of tourists in Beaufort West, which is on the N1 highway, and in the hamlet of Prince Albert, threatens to ruin some residents.
Samper’s wife Riana says Donkin Deli, their restaurant and butchery, has lost nearly 100% of its income.
The Lazy Lizard, a restaurant/bakery in Prince Albert, has a permit to supply fresh produce.
“We take the old people soups, granola and rusks, and they still need them during lockdown,” says Caryn Pastrana, who started the Lizard with her husband Juan.
“We see more of the locals now,” says Pastrana, from behind a shweshwe mask. On the counter a humidifier puffs out a teatree-and-lemon-verbena scent into a space filled by two long tables.
Medicinal plants like rue (for sore throats) from the local nursery, homemade bread, ginger, spinach, apples and other fresh vegetables and fruit are on display, alongside the latest collection of the locally sewn masks.
Dollmaker Brita Nathan is making cloth masks from a heap of material scraps donated for the purpose. Turning 50 yesterday, Nathan was also making a pineapple “beer” to celebrate.
The community effort to make masks is one sign of how Prince Albert residents have united to deal with the lockdown. Even in the nearest big town, Beaufort West, 131km away, there are none to be found.
The people of Prince Albert also support breakfasts and lunches every day for about 200 children, who line up barefoot waiting for their lunch boxes or cleaned margarine bakkies to be filled.
“There is a sense of community and being there for one another,” says Gay van Hasselt, who donates milk from Gay’s Dairy.
“If we look at this coronavirus as the Third World War, it’s like the Second World War where people are coming together.”
Uncertainty and being vulnerable to nature — features of the global pandemic — are also a way of life for Karoo farmers, who may be better adapted to Covid-19, if it reaches them.
“The virus is the same as the drought. We can’t plan ahead,” says Steyn, pausing. “We don’t know when it will begin here, and we don’t know when it will end.”