Fears of starvation grow as thousands of livestock die in South Africa drought
Farmers are auctioning their cattle before they die of thirst and hunger
In the middle of a desiccated lake bed in South Africa’s North West province, a seven-month-old calf is too weak to get up. It is doomed to die from thirst and hunger.
A devastating drought is claiming thousands of livestock in Africa’s most developed economy and prompting many to fear famine. A few kilometres away in the district of Madikwe, 30 villagers join Josephine Motsoasele, a traditional healer leading prayers for rain.
In a trance-like manner, farmers and villagers draped in colourful traditional clothes and sing and pray in local vernacular Setswana for the heavens to open up. “God, give us rain because we have a big problem,” Motsoasele prays, fearing widespread starvation. “We can’t do anything.”
It is not yet noon, but the room temperature has already breached 40 degrees Celsius.
The drought, blamed on the global cyclical extreme weather system El Nino, is the country’s worst since 1982.
Located near the border with Botswana, the man-made Molatedi dam is the largest in the province of 3.7 million people. It is now only five per cent full.
On the cracked earth, hundreds of cattle wander in search of the last drinking hole or that rare blade of grass.
A drying carcass of a cow lies on the parched ground, carved up by vultures.
According to meat producers, tens of thousands of cattle have died or are being culled due to the drought.
“There’s lots of animals dying on the farms,” said Lardus van Zyl, chairman of the Red Meat Producers Organisation.
Farmers are now auctioning their stocks before they die on their own and nearly a third more animals are being butchered compared to the same time last year, “mainly because of the drought,” van Zyl said.
Unfit for consumption
“In my experience it’s worse than ever, in the past at least the cattle was surviving,” said rancher McDonald Modise eyeing a carcass of one of his cows, which had died the previous day.
He will cook it for his dogs because it is no longer fit for human consumption.
Farmer Molemi Modise wrings a handful of dry grass. “It’s so bad when it’s get dry like this, even if the cattle feeds from this, it’s useless.”
“If we don’t get rain now I can assure you our people are going to die.”
Further south in the same province grain producers are also reeling and looking up to the skies, hoping for a miracle.