They may be god-fearing Calvinists, but the people of Merweville live like Buddhists — from day to day.
The 1 000-odd residents of this Central Karoo town cannot take a long view on anything, beyond hoping that the icy southern wind will change to the westerly wind that brings rain.
Not since 1961 has so little rain fallen. After three dry seasons any springbok and sheep that haven’t been trucked out of the bone-dry vlaktes have died or are dying. The farmers are trying to sell their remaining gemsbok, blesbok and wildebeest before summer comes.
Some, despairing of survival, are packing up and leaving their farms to seek work in Beaufort West and Laingsburg. One simply shut the door behind him, leaving his farm for whoever might claim it.
Former farmworkers who live in the local coloured township called Witblokke — after the small painted block-shaped houses — have been idle for a year.
Merweville (the villagers call it Mirville) lies between the Swart and Nuweveld mountains and can be reached only by driving long distances along dirt roads between Fraserburg, Sutherland and Prins Albert station.
Its only attraction is the grave of an ”Engelsman” — actually an Australian — who died by his own hand while stationed here during the South African Anglo-Boer War.
This is the Koup-Karoo, said to have been named after the Khoi word for belly fat — the explanation being that the grass that used to grow here shines like fat after rain has fallen.
”We now say ‘cope’ like the foreigners and not ‘koup’ like the Khoi, because there’s not a blade of grass left here. We’re coping. Just,” Barend Klink said wryly.
Klink is one of Merweville’s 45 peasant farmers. Another 68 commercial farmers live in the town and its vast surrounding farmlands.
For residents, everybody from further afield than Laingsburg is counted as a foreigner — including the Rupert family, who bought four farms here ”as their playground”.
”It’s a catastrophe,” says Antonie Botes, chairperson of the local farmers’ association. ”This morning I found three dead ewes and two lambs.
”Do those people in government know how a man’s heart feels when your animals are dying and you can do nothing to feed them?”
Botes and the other farmers who could afford to move their animals out of Merweville did so in April and May this year, renting land in Ceres, Loxton and elsewhere in the Karoo in an effort to save their breeding stock.
Most of the land hired from other farmers is available for only another month or two. Come summer, they will need their own grazing land.
The sheep left behind in Merweville are now kept in camps and have to be fed twice a week. It is a cost few farmers can bear for much longer.
Some are now feeding their animals only once a week, sufficient for only the strongest animals.
Lucinda Alberts and her husband Johan began feeding their sheep in June last year. ”Nine months ago we started running out of money because the feed costs more than what we can make selling the sheep,” she said.
”Johan and I decided that one of us must start working or we’ll lose the farm. I’m good with the sheep and he’s great with his hands, so we decided he should go and look for work and leave me and the two girls to look after the sheep and game.”
Johan found a job drilling for water in the Kalahari. He comes home only every few months.
Women farmers in the deep Karoo are about as common as rain clouds.
”I’d die before I ask for help,” Lucinda said. ”I’ve learned to pick up 50kg bags myself; I’m learning to fix the pumps and my five-year-olds know how to call me over the radio if I have to leave them alone at home.
”I’m going to survive this drought because I want my children to grow up here.”
Because game animals often refuse the lucerne put out for them, they started dying before the sheep. All the Alberts’s zebras had died by the end of last year. The 20 remaining gemsbok and 20 wildebeest will be sold by the end of this month.
”Our game is really battling, but what I can’t get used to is the way the sheep run to the bakkie when I arrive with their food. Some of the sheep are so weak they can’t fight the jackals and rooikatte (caracals) that are causing mayhem among the lambs,” Lucinda said.
”We’re losing five or six sheep a month and we’ve got no more to sell. If it doesn’t rain in the next six weeks, we’ll have to sell our breeding ewes.”
In contrast with the farmers of the Boland, Merweville’s skaapboere do not have holiday homes or Mercs and cannot send their children to private schools. The town has one double-storey house, which belongs to the combined general dealer, windmill mechanic and guesthouse owner, Tries Muller.
Fifth-generation Merweviller Johan Marais said that like the sheep, it will be the older farmers who survive.
”The young farmers are going under because they have nothing to sell to feed their animals. The older farmers like us, who’ve been farming for 20, 30, 40 years, have mostly paid off our land and are now selling everything we can to pay for fodder. I’ve sold my motorbike,” he said.
”The young farmers have massive debts and the peasant farmers don’t even have bicycles as security for loans.
”But we’ll all go under if the rains don’t come in the next month or government goes on refusing to help.”
Marais and his wife plan to sell three of their seven horses as food to a crocodile farm in Oudsthoorn on Monday this week. ”I can’t bear it. My wife will have to have that job,” he said.
Klink joined the white farmers’ association this year — the first coloured man to do so.
”The white farmers can teach me a lot about surviving this drought,” he said. ”But it’s not easy because relations between the whites and coloureds aren’t good. We’re still hotnots in their eyes, dirty workers.
”All I want is respect and one day I want my own farm,” Klink said.
Like the other peasant farmers, he rents communal land from the municipality and owns a small flock.
Klink also complained bitterly about the lack of government help. ”We don’t understand why the government is buying big boats but can’t help us during this drought,” he said. ”It’s hard not to get angry and not to judge them.
”We heard that the agriculture minister is bringing us new rams. Maybe by then all our sheep will be dead.”
At the end of last year national government gave R20-million in drought relief for the Western Cape. The money lasted for two months and since February this year Merweville’s farmers have received no assistance. Provincial agriculture minister Cobus Dowry said his department continually phones and writes to the national agriculture department in Pretoria.
”Every week we’re asking the national government to please respond to our calls for more help for the Merweville farmers, but the minister [Lulu Xingwana] doesn’t respond,” Dowry said.
”I think they know it’s urgent, but the administration processes take so long.
”I went to Merweville myself and I saw that the animals are really suffering. We’re not angry with the minister. We’re just frustrated because some officials in the department are dragging their feet.”