Who runs the orange river oasis? A case study of the midstream orange river oasis, Northern Cape Province, South Africa

Abstract

This chapter examines the conflicts among water users in the particular setting of a fluvial oasis, the largest in South Africa, which stretches along the Orange River for almost 300 km between the Karoo and Kalahari deserts, from Boegoeberg Dam to Augrabies Falls. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the White, predominantly Afrikaner farmers who colonised this area, dispossessing the Coloured farmers and then using their workforce, levelled the alluvial sandy dunes, built canals and planted crops in less than 60 years, from the 1880s to the 1950s. Although controlling water was a shared objective among Afrikaner farmers, English businessmen and colonial hydraulic engineers, the question of who should control the water and for what purpose raised endless conflicts in colonial society. Following the completion of the Orange-Fish Inter-basin transfer (1977) and the Lesotho Highland Water Project (1998–present), the central government has the possibility of diverting a large amount of the Orange water flow outside the basin. Today, there is a growing fear in the lower reaches that if severe drought affects the Gauteng area, the decision will be made to divert all the water towards the political and economic heart of South Africa. Using an approach based on political ecology and environmental history, this chapter investigates the complex links between local and national institutions that are in charge of water management, in the context of an institutional setting rapidly evolving since the end of apartheid in 1994. It also examines how the perspective of water shortages impacts the economy of this oasis in the context of globalisation.