The small landlocked kingdom of southern Africa, with abundant waterways, has become in less than twenty years one of the region’s leading producers of freshwater fish with delicate and sought-after flesh.
The villagers say they have always eaten salted and then sun-dried trout. On the banks, young boys brandish them at arm’s length in the direction of motorists.
Stephen Phakisi, 59, launched production in 2005 about fifty kilometers upstream from the Katse dam (center). With the construction of the 185-meter-high concrete behemoth, the Malibamatso River has widened, creating an ideal basin.
On the mini floating production line, workers in dry suits tighten the nets. Rainbow trout are pulled from the ponds in huge, swarming, slimy packs.
The men work quickly: anesthetized, killed then plunged into the ice, sixteen tons of fish are harvested before noon.
– Unexplored field –
“We had to pay a hell of a lot to get there. For five years, it wasn’t profitable at all,” the businessman admitted to AFP, laughing loudly. The unpleasant surprises were numerous: dying fish belly in the air, half-dead fry after a 16-hour drive from Cape Town…
A hands-on consultant involved in government projects, Mr. Phakisi embarked on this unexplored field with two partners and without knowing much about it.
It took him several years to find the food that fattens the fish in less than a year. As much to decipher a water which, under the effect of the phenomenal erosion which wears out a territory never under 1,400 meters of altitude, is radically transformed at the end of the dry season: level, temperature, oxygen.
Today, the breeder produces 800 tonnes per year which he sells for the equivalent of just over four euros per kilo. Apart from a few local restaurants, all of its production lands on the shelves of neighboring South Africa’s first high-end supermarket chain, where vacuum-packed portions can reach 50 euros a kilo.
The country’s two fish farms still contribute only slightly to the small economy with a GDP of 2 billion euros. The sector brought in nearly 680,000 euros in 2020, according to the national development body (LNDC), which is betting on serious “growth potential” with the construction of a new dam.
For thirty years, the country has been building Babylonian dams, of which Katse is the centerpiece, as well as a complex network of underground passages within the framework of an agreement with South Africa: Lesotho has done its most opulent wealth, water, nicknamed “white gold”, a marketable commodity.
The nation of 2.2 million people, among the poorest on the planet, transfers 27 cubic meters of water per second to Pretoria and Johannesburg some 470 km to the north, against a fee that brought in almost 60.8 million euros last year, according to the government.
“We sell water to South Africa but we don’t have it in our own homes,” storms Joshua Sefali, community leader of Lejone, a village on the shore where stone and thatched houses n often have neither water nor electricity.
Several thousand hectares have been flooded for the realization of major projects. Some have lost their homes and fields, in return for compensation.
A hat pulled down on his head, Machaka Khalala, 31, tramples on the side of the road. There are dozens of them waiting stubbornly in the cold with buckets. Every week, one of the fish farms distributes leftovers. “Heads and bones,” she says.
Her field where she grew corn and spinach was submerged. She received 170 euros in return. Today she survives by selling “fat cakes” in the street, typical donuts, for the workers’ breakfast.
