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Drought in southern Africa has triggered widespread food insecurity made worse by a costly, controversial dam project that is siphoning water from the impoverished, tiny, landlocked nation of Lesotho to wash cars, fill swimming pools and nurture gardens in neighboring South Africa’s tony suburbs.
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Erratic rainfall linked to the El Niño weather system has depleted large swaths of eastern and southern Africa of water, causing crops to fail. The World Food Program estimates that 680,000 people — representing nearly a quarter of Lesotho’s total population — are in need of emergency food and assistance.
But smallholder and subsistence farmers told the AFP news agency that they could increase their meager yields if they could irrigate crops with water from the vast Katse Dam.
“I am very angry about that water, because it could benefit us, we could use it to water the crops when there is a drought. But that's not happening,” Mohlakoane Molise, a 65-year-old farmer, told AFP.
Molise’s total annual harvest for 2016 filled just two large sacks, in place of the usual dozen. According WFP, the 2016 harvest for Lesotho's primary crop maize is less than a third of what it was last year.
While depleted, the Katse Dam is still at more than half its normal water level, meaning that many farmers are watching their crops shrivel and die against the backdrop of an expansive lake.
“The level today is about 63.4 percent, which is quite low,” Tatuku Maseatile, Katse acting branch manager for the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, told AFP. “(But) we are still able to meet our annual targets in terms of both (electricity) generation and water transfer.”
The Katse Dam is part of a massive, $8 billion dam project known as the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Located in South Africa’s northeast corner, the kingdom of Lesotho was dubbed South Africa’s ‘Water Castle’ when the project was first proposed in the mid 1990's as the sun set on the apartheid government. Financed largely with loans from the World Bank, the dams are intended to supply Lesotho with hydroelectricity while supplying two of South Africa’s most developed cities, Pretoria and Johannesburg, with water, most of which is used by the country’s most prosperous neighborhoods.
Environmental advocates, however, urged then-President Nelson Mandela to veto the plan, and instead simply repair the country’s leaky infrastructure for far less money. But Mandela, and his ruling African National Congress, proceeded with the plan, in part to woo international investors with their commitment to the free-market system.
But the dams have so far been disastrous for virtually everyone but foreign investors. Earlier this month, the ANC suffered its worst electoral losses since the end of apartheid, in no small part because of neoliberal policies such as the one that influenced the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. And Lesothian farmers have fared even wore, losing their access to the water, and their livelihoods.
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“There were fields around the river before the dam was built, and there were trees, but they are covered by water,” Molise told AFP.
“Since the dam is here, it's difficult to get water. The crops are very poor, even the grazing land. It's like a desert.”
The tiny nation is now forced to import food from South Africa, which has also been affected by El Niño, reducing crop yields and pushing prices up by 60 percent in the past year.
“From September, we'll have nothing left and we'll struggle to buy maize from the shop,” said Molise.
The United Nations estimates that as many as 40 million people across southern Africa risk enduring malnutrition in the next year.
WATCH: African Nation of Lesotho in Crisis
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