Beaufort West - The sun bakes down so hot the tar sticks to your soles.
It is the worst drought in living memory. “We know heat and we know drought, but we’ve never had our water cut off because there is not enough,” said Maria Makok, caretaker of a school hostel in the scorching Karoo town.
It’s not yet end of term, but the boarders have all left.
“The farmers came to fetch them. We had so little water we could only put a tiny bit into the bath and then we put six children in together, to save water like that. The children didn’t like it, they just wanted to go home, so the farmers came to fetch them early.”
She’s standing in the road waiting for her colleague, Donovan Janse, to wander back from the big green water tanker. His feet make little puffs of dust in the still air.
“Ons kry a bietjie swaar met die water storie (we’re battling a bit with the water situation), but they give us water in this tanker when they turn the taps off,” Janse said.
It was the turn of his area to have water cut for the best part of two days.
The purpose is to keep up the water pressure, so what water there is can continue to be piped around the town. The system began three weeks ago, and residents are resigned to it.
“I bath in a small bakkie (basin) of water like this, and I still finish clean,” Makok said.
Across the way Anne Wrieslaas and her granddaughter, Euthanesia, are scrubbing cupboards under a thorn tree.
“It’s Christmas so we’re spring cleaning, but now we must do it with buckets because today was our turn for no water. I was born here, I am 75 now, but in my lifetime we never had water problems in the town. But what can we do? We must maar (nevertheless) adapt to circumstances,” Wrieslaar said.
Hein Rust, disaster manager for the area, opens a huge shed on the outskirts of town where they have stockpiled over 3 000 five-litre bottles of water, donated by companies and ordinary people passing though the town who have responded to the call by Agri-Wes Cape to send water.
This water is just a drop in the ocean of the millions of litres the town uses every day, but every bit helps.
“The matrics helped us distribute some to people today, and we’ll do more tomorrow. We’ve had many promises from companies,” he said.
On the outskirts of town, goats wander along the bed of what was the Springfontein dam. It used to supply Beaufort West with its famous lei water that funnelled down the streets to houses for irrigation. That dried up six months ago. Not even a piece of cracked mud is left.
Town engineer Louw Smit has his hands full balancing the meagre supply. “The dam ran dry long ago and the boreholes have dropped 30m in the last month. But we’ve got six or seven other aquifers that we’re exploring.” - Cape Times