Flocks of sheep cut down by a third, jobless farmworkers huddled on corners in dorpies, endless expanses of dry earth unfit for grazing.
This is the reality for sheep farmers in the upper Karoo, where the stranglehold of a three-year drought is not letting up.
"We are not used to being beggars," said Jan van der Merwe in the kitchen of his remote farmhouse, 30km along a dirt road from Sutherland in the Northern Cape.
The worst drought in his four decades there has turned him into an anxious mathematician. He has worked out that his 800 sheep cost R96 000 a month to feed on bought fodder. At R3,200 a day, "if you make a sum of it", in 18 months he would have paid out the value of the flock.A pump that goes down 40m now hits highly acidic water. Invest in a new borehole or call it quits? The maths went around in his head on Thursday, when he woke before dawn to move his remaining sheep to lower ground in search of grazing after a short spell of rain.
According to a plea for help written by Hester Obermeyer, a shopkeeper and farmer's wife, 140 farmers are in dire straits around Sutherland, about 55 cannot pay what they owe businesses in town, and 200 farmworkers have been laid off.It is the same for farmers all over the region, from Calvinia to Fraserburg to Williston and beyond: without rain, the rivers don't flow. Without the rivers, there is no irrigation. And without irrigation, you can't grow fodder for animals whose grazing areas have died.
Elsa, Van der Merwe's wife, said they had lost 70 lambs. "They get hungry and then are too weak to fight for their lives when it is cold."Adrian Visagie, 26, was a shepherd on another farm in the area for four years until a few months ago, when he was let go. Now he spends his days in the small township behind Sutherland wondering where the next meal will come from for his partner and child.
Ester Jordaan, who owns a small home industry and clothing shop, said: "Every business in town is affected. People don't buy what they used to buy. I haven't seen a farmer's wife for long. They also used to buy new velskoene for the workers every six months; now the shoes must last much longer."
It is estimated that more than five million hectares are affected, and 800,000 sheep, and that normal rainfall will be needed for several years to turn the corner.
"When the farmers suffer, the effect goes down to the whole community. I feel for them, I feel for everybody here," said Van der Merwe.
For emerging farmer Piet van Wyk, the drought has made a burden of what was meant to be a lifeline. In 2010, he received a government subsidy to join a co-op of nine other emerging farmers on the road to Fraserburg. But the drought has stopped development in its tracks.
"The last three years have been very difficult," he said. "If the drought doesn't end, we must sell up. We all had about 40 sheep. One guy lost about 10. Some of us lost four. It is too expensive to buy food for the animals if we can't make our own."For some farmers, the biggest problem had been jackals and rooikats, he said. "Those animals are also hungry because of the drought. They can't find food up in the mountains so they come down here. The sheep are easy prey and are weak. So they take them."
Douglas Calldo, a farmer from Brandvlei moving his sheep this week to look for better grazing, said: "People think it is just a farmers' problem. But it's up to farmers to put food on people's tables. I think they forget where their food comes from."
This is a point also raised by the Agri Northern Cape Drought Disaster Fund. "The impact of the drought is experienced first-hand by the farmers, but in the end the consumer will also experience it through product shortages and price increases," it said.
One thing that hasn't run dry is the well of hope. The fund, a few organisations and individuals are doing what they can to help. Gift of the Givers recently began drilling boreholes on farms in the Sutherland area, and people have sent groceries and care packs for those most affected.
"All we can do now is pray for rain," said Van der Merwe. Van Wyk, leaning against the blue wall of a makeshift house, said: "Even the small rain this week gives us hope. Maybe there will be more."..