Bronwyn Jones
EVERY year the Sahara Desert expands its arid boundaries and the population of Africa grows. And while big plans are afoot to tap the waters of Zambia and Lesotho to quench South Africa’s industrial thirst, none of it will prove enough unless tied with long-term protection of water sources and a sharp curb on population growth.
Water is a transnational asset and the morality of taking from one country to help a neighbour progress is barely touched upon in the treaties between nations.
Such debates are not unique to Africa. In Turkey, construction of Ataturk dam in the Kurdish stronghold near the Syrian border, had immense implications for the people living downstream. While Turkey argued that the mighty Euphrates travelled through three nations and so it was entitled to one- third of the water, hydrology mathematics doesn’t work like that.
Control the water flow, remove the fertile silt deposition of annual floods, and fragile ecosystems are broken. Ancient peoples are placed under threat. What way of life is left for a Marsh Arab with no marsh?
Likewise in Lesotho, for one person’s gain there is always a balancing loss. But how many consumers know or care about the human cost of bringing that water to them?
The villages of Lesotho are dirt poor. The “white gold” rushing across the contours of fierce streams has not filled the bank accounts of the blanket-clad Basotho.
Instead, they have been forced to abandon the craggy compounds of their forefathers., to let their homes be swallowed by the rising waters of vast reservoirs behind concrete dams.
They have dug up the remains of relatives, reburying their dead above the waterline. What disturbed spirits could have dreamed of a da capo funeral? And, with old routes between families and fields abandoned to the rising tide, few will pray by their new gravesides. All to the greater greed, of Gauteng.
Engineers know there is an unwritten scale of political clout. Build a dam in the middle of Johannesburg and a lot of well-educated people living nearby equates to a lot of fuss and that’s potentially expensive.
Build a dam amid the mountains of Lesotho and hell, you don’t even have to make a thorough geological survey. You know the ground is likely to shake as the water level rises (putting weight on the earth) but there is no need to forewarn people who won’t make a fuss. They can be scared half rigid because theirs is a silent scream on the dollar index. And so, as the media briefly noticed, half a dozen huts tumbled in a Lesotho village. But the ripple on the stock exchange pond was short-lived.
When a crack tore through Mapaleng (90km south-east of Ficksburg), no one even knew there was an old fault there. The event was classed as “micro” seismic, its damage to houses attributed to poor construction. Replacement shelter took months to arrange, but at last three houses were repaired and five prefabricated houses have replaced some of the damaged structures. Still, all of the households want to move.
By early this year 1 600ha of arable land had been lost around Katse, as well as 3 200ha of grazing land, 3 000 trees and 17ha of gardens. Some of the 63 villages seriously affected will eventually be entirely relocated.
But in the meantime the hillsides are still quaking, especially after last summer’s heavy rainfall. Unlike at the start of the project, the seismic stations are all working.
It is just as well because authorities admit there are “possibly hundreds” of other faults around Katse reservoir. At least four other villages have been noticeably shaken.
Earlier this year, the level of earthquakes around Katse — 16 of them in a month, 37 in the next – — reached level VII on the internationally used Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale. Level VII states: “Difficult to stand. Noticed by drivers of motor cars … Furniture broken. Damage to masonry … Weak chimneys broken … waves on ponds, water turbid with mud. Small slides and caving in … large bells ring.”
There aren’t any bells in Mapaleng. But at least metaphorically they have rung. Rung a warning that the serenity of the boulder-ringed village has a value: a value that those with hard hats might do well to consider as their helicopters tornado the dust over the men, women and infants watching preparations to supply water to the thirsty South African sponge.