An estimated 10th of the country is experiencing the driest year on record, agricultural meteorologist Johan van den Berg from Enviro Vision in Bloemfontein said on Monday.
Official records, being kept since 1915, show that several parts of South Africa during the past 11 months received the least rain in 88 years, he said.
These are around Utrecht and Paul Pietersburg in northern Kwazulu-Natal, Harrismith in the eastern Free State, Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, Thabazimbi and Ellisras in Limpopo, Kenhardt in the Northern Cape, and Elliot in the Eastern Cape.
Van den Berg predicted a dramatic fall in the expected national maize crop if most of the country does not receive relatively good rains before the end of December.
However, current scientific indications are that widespread downpours can only be expected from the second part of January until the first part of March, he said.
That would be past planting time for the country’s maize producers.
Wheat farmers are already harvesting yields far less than expected due to drought damage, Van den Berg said.
Some in the irrigation areas are obtaining between two to four ton a hectare — less than half of the tonnage they cultivate during normal seasons.
With constant high temperatures and the rain staying away, cattle are starting to die in communal areas where their owners cannot afford supplementary feed.
Reinet Meyer from the Bloemfontein Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) recently had to put down two animals at nearby Excelsior.
They had collapsed due to malnutrition, she said.
The municipal grazing patch made available to livestock owners from the local township is inadequate for all the animals being kept on it.
Meyer said it is the first time since the 1988 drought that she has had to put down farm animals for this reason.
To compound the problem, the dry summer is following an equally hard winter for communal herds.
According to Marizda Kruger from the National SPCA they have received an abnormally high number of calls for disaster relief this year.
”Every winter we must attend to a few cattle, but this year it was very bad, especially in Limpopo and the North West,” she said. — Sapa