A requiem as Gaborone Dam gives up the ghost
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday October 10, 2014 17:31
In recent weeks, concerned spirituals and ordinary citizens have visited Gaborone Dam to cast their hands over its brown/green waters and pray for a miracle.
Standing by the banks of what was the country’s biggest dam for 48 years, heart-felt supplications have been made, eyes teary as they contemplate the great beast before them, its knees sunken into the silt, its once shimmering pride an ashen memory.
For the first time in its history, Gaborone Dam is dying, its once proud 141 million cubic metres of water drying up to barely four metres above silt level. Of the seven water draw-off points in the Dam, six are exposed and the last is halfway in the water.
Once the water reaches below this last water draw-off point, Gaborone Dam will have failed, depriving the 500,000 or so residents and businesses of Greater Gaborone their primary and traditional source of water.
Experts officially estimate two months, but the failure could literally happen any day, particularly due to higher usage associated with warmer temperatures as well as the higher evaporation rates.
The Meteorological Services Department expects rain in Gaborone Dam’s catchment area to begin falling mid-November, but even then, deluges of biblical proportions would be required to save Old Faithful.
Having put off the unappealing trip for several weeks, members of a Mmegi news crew on Thursday muster their courage to go and conduct body-viewing and a requiem for the once mighty Gaborone Dam.
We trail the path beaten in recent days by churchgoers and concerned citizens who have requested and received access to the funeral.
Since its construction in 1964, Gaborone Dam has always been a fighter, a defiant oasis in a semi-arid climate, faithfully serving a rapidly blossoming population and standing as the sole constant in a world of variables.
Beaten yes, but not defeated. Pummelled, but still standing the Dam has taken the punches of persistent droughts, rising usage and climate change, but Old Faithful hitherto, had not gone down for the count.
On this sunny but cheerless Thursday morning, the Mmegi news crew snakes its way through the eastern entrance of the enclosure in which Gaborone Dam lies in state.
Keeping with the sombreness of the moment, the wind and bushveld are still as we drive ever closer through the Dam’s floodplain towards where the great beast has lain fallen.
Behind a rocky outcrop, the full extent of Old Faithful’s injuries come into tragic view. The rocky outcrop, in fact, should ordinarily be submerged in water, meaning we have driven over the proud beast’s former stomping ground in attempting to reach him.
Water is sparsely distributed around the rocks and the sand. Where we stand, all manner of once submerged debris such as wheels and tins are scattered. It is difficult to see what source is actually feeding the Dam as the water from its known eastern catchment is but a trickle.
What is striking is the dead silence. But for the tittering of a few disrespectful birds and the darting movements of small mammal around the rocks, we could be the only things alive here.
Certainly more alive than Old Faithful who lies gasping in the morning heat. It is 1030hrs, but already temperatures have reached 30 degrees and the visible evaporation completes the image of the Dam giving up the ghost.
A short trip to the Dam’s western entrance and the true state of Old Faithful’s demise becomes clear.
Standing on the 25-metre high wall, what should be the deepest point in the Dam is very visibly not. The outlet tower, or the iconic concrete structure within Gaborone Dam that has the measuring strips running down the side, strikes a forlorn figure within the quiet waters.
At the time of its construction, a yellow measuring strip was emblazoned down the tower to about 10 percent capacity, possibly because optimistic developers never believed the waters could decline beyond this level.
Earlier this year, the Water Utilities Corporation was forced to draw a new white strip next to the old yellow one as levels receded. That level too has been breached, painting a painful picture of the Dam’s certain demise.
As far as the eye can see lies rock upon rock, muddy ground where waters once stood and in the far distance, a small herd of cattle risk being stuck in the mud to tug at blades of grass.
Of the rocks, a colleague recalls how in his youth as a schoolboy at nearby St Josephs, he would skip on the rocks in the Dam with his colleagues. Only after a friend drowned, did they discover that what they thought were rocks in the water were actually the tips of big boulders!
His recollection reminds me of the fact that Gaborone Dam was last in full health in December 2001 at 100 percent to be exact.
Since then records show that the Dam fell to 16 percent in December 2005, recovered to about 80 percent in April 2011 and has been dying ever since.
Silent prayers made, we drive off the dam wall and once again face Gaborone whose residents go about their business, blissfully unaware that Old Faithful lies nearby on his last breath.