How A Community Is Keeping Hope Alive

The drought of the past eight years has transformed the Sutherland district into an austere and desolated landscape, almost lunar-like in its bleakness. Despite the devastation, the community here has decided to do all it can to survive, and help others survive, until the rain comes again. Annelie Coleman reports.

- Annelie Coleman

Sheep farming is the most important agricultural activity in Sutherland in the Northern Cape. But the last good rainfall in the region occurred nearly eight years ago, and the number of sheep in this farming community has since declined about 50%.

According to Abra van Wyk of the farm Modderfontein, Northern Cape farmers are used to sporadic periods of droughts, but nothing could have prepared them for this protracted misery.

“In 2013, the flocks were highly productive, the veld was in an excellent condition, and we had more than enough feed for the animals. Little did we know that we were on the brink of probably the worst drought in our history,” he says.

Since 2013, the average annual rainfall has been a mere one-third of the normal figure. Marinus Blom of the farm Elandsberg says that most of the grass and shrubs on the veld have succumbed to the heat and lack of moisture. The crisis has been exacerbated by the fact that the limited rain has lately fallen outside of the growing season.

The few animals that are left are in such poor condition that productivity and wool production have come to a standstill, leaving farmers without income.

“We’ll never be able to catch up with the financial losses caused by this disaster,” says Blom.

SW van der Merwe of the farm Tweeriviere says that a “small part of him dies” every time he finds himself in the bare veld. “I’m particularly beholden to my wife, as she is the one to whom I vent all my fears, problems and challenges,” he says.

A HEARTBREAKING SIGHT