From the foundation of Upington in the 1880s, irrigation of the Orange River has been central to its economic existence. Both north and south of the river in these parts are some of the driest lands of South Africa – the Kalahari to the north and Bushmanland to the south. But today, along a 280-kilometre stretch between the Buchuberg Dam and the Aughrabies Falls, centred on Upington, are some 25 000 morgen of immensely productive land. In the words of local publicist J.M. Brauer, it is ‘a heavenly greenbelt… a verdant paradise… [stretching] through irrigation settlements, along canals, past fields of lucerne, orange groves, vineyards, and past kameeldoring trees. You see green islands with patch-quilt farmlands and red-roofed houses, white stone bridges and suspension bridges made of wire strands laced with thousands of short wild tree poles.’

White historical mythology credits the DRC missionary C.H.W. Schroeder, who lived in the area in 1871–9 and 1883–1912, with the idea of irrigating the Orange. Such historiography takes for granted that white drive, innovation, and ‘know-how’, assisted at most by black labour, developed and ‘modernised’ South Africa. But, so far as irrigation of the Orange River is concerned, the quotation from Percy Nightingale at the start of this chapter sets matters straight. It is the preface to the following: