By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 21 2006 (IPS)

For generations, African farmers have relied on local knowledge to manage and conserve water.

Whether or not this knowledge should be recognised and promoted by government is a matter of some debate in the Southern African region, however. The issue is also in the spotlight Wednesday, which marks World Water Day. Events to commemorate the day in 2006 are focusing on the theme of ‘Water and Culture’.

“Government is not able to respond adequately to droughts and floods. We feel that it should recognise that local people respond on their own,” said Jacqui Goldin, senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a non-profit group. She was speaking from IWMI’s regional office in the South African capital, Pretoria.

Goldin heads a team that is investigating indigenous knowledge of water use in the northern province of Limpopo – particularly the East Soutpansberg area, where water is in short supply.

She said the researchers had found that certain principles governing water use were passed on orally.

“The rules are very strict, whenever a water spot is found…You don’t wash yourself or your car at the top of the fountain; you can only drink at the top of the fountain. The water is strictly for domestic use, and the people use it extremely carefully,” Goldin told IPS.

The drier the weather becomes, the tighter the restrictions.

“During drought, the priority is the family and the sick, followed by cows and goats. Men usually come last,” said Goldin, emphasising that these findings were preliminary, and that they could be contradicted at a later stage.

IWMI researchers also discovered that traditional ways of managing water helped unite communities.

“Women use the fountain or the river for networking. They meet and talk, and exchange and share ideas about common problems,” said Goldin. “If everybody had piped water at home, the women wouldn’t have been able to interact.”

Others believe that traditional approaches to water management are sometimes of limited use.

“Africa has got to change and adopt new methods of harnessing and managing water. It must abandon traditional ways and adopt a new system,” Phillip Mudehwe, regional water and sanitation officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross, told IPS in a telephone interview from the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

“The traditional way should be abandoned where people wait for rain – and when it doesn’t come, you say ‘I am finished’. Modern ways of irrigation should be found to help the community,” he added.

“We cannot rely on weather now. Weather used to be predictable; these days it’s unpredictable, and sometimes we don’t have rains.”

Both droughts and floods have taken a severe toll on Southern Africa in recent years, their effects compounded by the AIDS pandemic.

Over past months, up to 12 million people across the region have been relying on emergency aid, says global charity Oxfam. It is expected that they will need supplies until the next harvest gets underway in April – and perhaps after that.

Since late last year heavy rains have also devastated parts of Malawi and Mozambique. The Famine Early Warning System Network of the United States Agency for International Development has reported that at least 22 people in Mozambique died as a result, while in Malawi more than 2,000 people were made homeless by floods. Hundreds of hectares of maize, millet and sorghum were also destroyed.

Mudehwe believes that more careful management of rain waters could help Southern Africa become less vulnerable to drought.

“In every good rainy season, if water is properly harnessed and managed, we can produce food for five years,” he said, noting that much of the poverty in Africa was associated with mismanagement of water, even though the resource was “abundant …in comparison to other regions of the world.”

Population increases on the continent had also necessitated a new approach to water use, Mudehwe observed. Statistics from the African Union put the continent’s population at more than 800 million people.

In certain instances, a mix of traditional and modern methods of water management appears to be showing the way.

While the local communities studied by IWMI observe long-standing customs for water use, they’ve also invested in an initiative to make water more readily available.

”Eight families contribute a total of 1,600 rand (almost 260 dollars) to buy plastic pipe to get water down to them…The government couldn’t have done it so cheaply,” said Goldin, noting that 70 percent of people in the rural East Soutpansberg still lacked potable water.

“Even those who have, find that their water pipes are often blocked or leaking. The quality is poor and supply is irregular.”

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