Flowers Now Grow On Desert

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 44, 21 January 1949, Page 7

Flowers Now Grow On Desert

A remarkable transformation has taken place in the Kalahari Desert, which covers thousands of square miles of Bachuanaland and Southwest Africa. It is not at the moment a boulder-strewn waste of sand, for earlier this year extensive rains fell in the desert, causing many varieties of grass and other plants to spring up and cover, the bare ground. Drought-resisting grasses are standing feet high on what six months ago were barren wastelands. In particular, there has been a record crop of the tsama melon, which is rich in water and valuable vegetable oil. The veld is looking its best, and great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep are heading for the Kalahari to graze there. Geologists declare that the Kalahari Desert was in remote years a vast inland sea, and that the Makarikari salt pans and adjacent swamps are the remnants of a great ocean that once stretched to the Transvaal border. In the past men who have trekked through the Kalahari have been inclined to scoff at the theory that there could ever have been flowing rivers and green grass in this inhospitable area. But the change that has come over the country with recent rains has caused many an oldtimer to change his opinion. Sheep and cattle are doing so well there that a recent stock sale at Upington—the “capital” of the Kalahari wastelands livestock worth more than £350,000 was sold. Moreover, the excellent state of the veld has encouraged farmers to revive an old plan which seeks to pump water from the Orange River into the salt pans of the desert. This would flood vast areas of the Kalahari to a depth of two to three feet and enable the farmers to plant hundreds of thousands of tons of lucerne, wheat, oats and millet.