Now it’s Gqeberha area facing day zero
Drought, bad management spell disaster in E Cape
Fourth-generation Gamtoos Valley citrus farmer Khaya Katoo will make a pilgrimage today to the Kouga Dam to pray with his wife Crewelyn.
“It’s the only thing that will save us now — God and rain.”
After a year of 20% of the needed rainfall, preceded by two years at 40%, he is watching his citrus crop go to ruin.
Katoo relies on the dam, currently 4.59% full, for water. The same dam also supplies about 20% of its capacity to Gqeberha. Once the dam level reaches 3.1%, the water level is below the sluices and cannot be pumped out.
It’s not just this dam. After six years of drought the whole Kouga subsystem supplying the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) metro is down to 13% of capacity, with Hankey, Patensie, Loerie and KwaNobuhle facing a potential day zero by July 1.
On Katoo’s 360ha farm near Hankey, day zero will all but wipe out his heritage.
“You can imagine what it would mean for me to be the one to lose the farm. My greatgrandfather owned this land but it was dispossessed [during apartheid]. In 2003 my family got the land back and now I continue the work my family started.”
Last year a 5ha orchard produced 820 bins of citrus — this year the same orchard produced 361 bins. Most of the fruit had to be discarded.
“We should be picking right now. Instead 80 people are without that income,” Katoo said. “It costs R1.3m to establish 10ha of citrus. Unless it rains the dam will be dry by the end of the year and those trees will die. I won’t be able to recover.”
Katoo, an electrical engineer and Gamtoos irrigation board member, believes doubling the height of the 82m Kouga dam wall would give farmers three more years of water, but water & sanitation minister Lindiwe Sisulu disagrees.
The department says it will not declare the area a disaster, potentially blocking millions of rands in water aid.
Instead, Sisulu said other solutions would be implemented, including a desalination plant that would be ready next year.
Other plans include making repairs to leaking pipes — 40% of the metro’s potable water goes to waste — and spending R200m on new boreholes.
Sisulu also agreed to follow up on a request by NMB mayor Nqaba Bhanga to roll over a R160m conditional grant that the Treasury retrieved after the metro failed to spend it between 2018 and 2020.
Bhanga’s acting spokesperson, Leander Kruger, said NMB was revamping its drought awareness campaign because it had failed to get the message across.
When the Sunday Times asked Gqeberha residents about the drought, most did not realise there were even restrictions in place.
But after weeks of unrest over water supply, residents of KwaNobuhle township — who will be the first without water if the taps run dry — took to the streets in a violent protest during which a truck was burnt.
In the township of Windvogel, water tanks are being brought in but many are missing taps or pumps and can’t be used.
Unable to use the tank opposite his home, wheelchair-bound Shaun Felix travelled 4km to the nearest water source.
Resident Romano Davis said children who collected water from the tanks often forgot to close the taps.
NMB spokersperson Mthubanzi Mniki said measures taken by the city to head off disaster included stepping up leak identification and repairs, water restrictions, higher water tariffs and “an aggressive awareness campaign”.
The city would also maximise the supply from the Nooitgedacht plant — which treats water diverted from the Gariep Dam — and drill boreholes. The boreholes would boost supply by 15Ml a day.
The metro is now using about 300Ml a day. “The usage to be aimed for was initially 250Ml a day, but with no significant rain in the last 12 months the target has reduced to below 225Ml a day,” Mniki said.
Tally Palmer, director at the Institute for Water Research at Nelson Mandela University, said the crisis was a result of physical availability and fractured water governance.
“The whole catchment area is empty so if it rains, millions of tons of soil will absorb the rain before it has the ability to run off into the dams,” she said, adding that weak water governance compounded the problem.
Mike Muller, adjunct professor at the Wits University school of governance, said the city’s water crisis was largely the result of delays to the Nooitgedacht scheme.
“The supply line and treatment works have been on the agenda for decades and haven’t been built,” he said.
When complete, Nooitgedacht will supply 70% of the metro’s water. It currently supplies 50%-60%.
“It has taken over 10 years to build a project that should have been completed in three years,” Muller said.
Professor Tony Turton of the University of the Free State said the water crisis in Cape Town four years ago should have been a red flag for NMB. “It is arguably one of our most important cities because it is home to the motor industry, which exports motor vehicles and employs a lot of people,” he said.
While the Orange-Fish water-transfer pipeline from Gariep Dam was running at full capacity, population growth had outstripped supply and the municipal infrastructure had begun to fail.
Turton said the crisis was likely to spark discussions for a public-private partnership to build a utility-scale desalination plant.
Upgrading the pipeline from Gariep to carry more water would take years, he said.
“In that time you could have a full-scale desalination plant delivering 200Ml a day for industrial purposes.”
NMB business chamber chair Andrew Muir said local industry, which includes heavyweights such as Volkswagen and pharmaceutical company Aspen, were hoping that the crisis would spur the government to get the Nooitgedacht scheme finished and drill boreholes.
You can imagine what it would mean for me to be the one to lose the farm. My great-grandfather owned this land but it was dispossessed … In 2003 my family got the land back [in the restitution land claims reform] and now I continue the work my family started
Khaya Katoo
Hankey citrus farmer