Good rain fills northern dams but southern crops might still fail

Drenching rains have filled Swaziland's dams to capacity, but the heavy downpours may have come too late to save the maize harvest in the drought-hit south of the country. The Ministry of Agriculture has warned that clear skies from January through early March, especially in the south, ensured that only a fraction of the crops planted during the spring would survive to harvest, which begins next month. The government's National Disaster Relief Task Force and the World Food Programme are to continue food aid distributions to 240,000 vulnerable Swazis - around a quarter of the population. Uneven distribution of rain has thrown into focus the divide between the well-watered middleveld and highveld areas of the central and western Manzini Region, as well as the northern Hhohho Region, and the drought-prone eastern Lubombo and southern Shiselweni Regions. "We have a choice of declaring the lower third of the country's geographical area unfit for agriculture, which is unpractical because of the tens of thousands of small-landholder subsistence farming families there, or else government can step up its plans to bring northern water southward for irrigation purposes," said a source with the Ministry of Agriculture. "Heavy rains have raised most of Swaziland's northern and central dams to full capacity. Summer is over, and there is sufficient water in place for irrigation use throughout the winter for crops," said Charles Nkambule of the Ministry of Natural Resources. The Maguga Dam, Swaziland's largest, is full for the first time since it was built in 2003, forcing the Komati River Basin Water Authority, the South Africa-Swaziland co-venture that built and maintains the dam, to open the sluice gates - a novel procedure. Maguga was built with the intention of irrigating the fields of small agricultural cooperatives in the eastern Lubombo and southern Shiselweni Regions - which, because of low water levels, it has never been able to do. By treaty, 60 percent of the dam's water was guaranteed to South Africa, which put up 60 percent of the dam's US $183 million construction cost. The 870 metre-long dam rises 115 metres, creating a storage capacity of 332 million square metres of water, a volume never realised before this week. The usually low water level in Maguga has also hindered plans to produce hydroelectric power. Swaziland imports 90 percent of its electrical power from South Africa, but the dam has the ability to meet 50 percent of the kingdom's electricity needs once a hydroelectric generating facility goes on line. No date has been set for the start-up.