Despite this year’s promising rain, we should still expect, with climate change, increased drought with sustained torrential rain and floods on the one hand, and no rain the next. We have to understand that whilst our water situation has always been serious, it is bound to get a great deal worse, very rapidly. But that is not how we see it. Forget that the Gaborone Dam has twice been dry in its short life; because dams everywhere now have water.
The trouble is that diamond money has left us in a dream world where we can drift along, content and convinced that money can buy anything, even water. Is it not so? Provide enough cash and the new dams are constructed in the north and two, north-south pipelines put in place at great cost to provide water for Serowe, Palapye and Mahalapye and the Greater Gaborone region, Mochudi, Molepolole, Kanye, Ramotswa and Tlokweng. What happens when that population doubles and this supply no longer suffices, partly because so much in the dams is lost through evaporation? Bring in water from Chobe or Lesotho perhaps by bringing it in by heavy-duty water trains to Gaborone just as it might be thought that desalinated seawater could be brought in the same way on the new line from Walvis Bay?
The alternative is miles and miles of piping with more water lost through leaks than actually arrives. It’s all a bit desperate, isn’t it? As for the idea, apparently approved, of getting water from Lesotho, that idea is surely for the birds – unless water balloons are tried but a drone or two will quickly put paid to the idea.
