RSS Feed
Author Archive
South Africa suffers driest year on record in 2015
Posted by Reuters: Ed Stoddard on January 15th, 2016
Reuters: South Africa suffered its driest year on record in 2015, the national weather service said on Thursday, as a drought that has threatened the vital maize crop and hit economic growth showed no sign of abating.
Average rainfall was 403 mm, about a third less than the 608 mm annual average and the driest since records began in 1904, the service added.
The agricultural sector is being hammered by weeks of heat waves that have scorched grazing land, forcing livestock owners to kill or sell animals....
Posted in 
Southern Africa faces food shortages as El Nino drought worsens: FAO
Posted by Reuters: Ed Stoddard on December 23rd, 2015
Reuters: Southern Africa faces food shortages as drought, exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern, delays planting and stunts crops across the region, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said in an alert. "The presence of a strong El Nino episode in 2015/16 raises serious concerns regarding the impact on food insecurity," the FAO said in the alert, issued late on Tuesday. Regional harvests last season were also badly affected by drought conditions, raising the specter of back-to-back...
South African drought follows third-driest season 80 years
Posted by Reuters: Ed Stoddard on November 10th, 2015
Reuters: The sugar-growing South African province of KwaZulu Natal is the driest it has been in over a century, according to data provided on Tuesday by the South African Weather Service, underscoring the scale of a drought scorching Africa's most advanced economy.
The drought, seen worsening due to an El Nino weather pattern, threatens South Africa's diverse farm sector including its key maize crop, which may fuel food prices and inflation at a time when the central bank is in a tightening cycle.
For...
ANC may pay as drought withers black South African farmers’ dreams
Posted by Reuters: Ed Stoddard on November 9th, 2015
Reuters: Cattle are the traditional asset by which Nampie Motloung, a subsistence black South African farmer, has long measured his wealth. But a blistering drought has made them a liability. "I have no choice but to sell some of my cows. I must do it before they die," Motloung, 62, told Reuters as his 30-strong herd ambled in the distance across the parched landscape. "It pains me to do so. My cattle are my family's inheritance," he said. The wealth of small-scale farmers and the dreams of emerging black...
Record prices spur drive to get more “dumped” gold
Posted by Reuters: Ed Stoddard on September 23rd, 2011
Reuters: The vast majority of South Africa's gold lies deep underground but atop the mine dumps scattered around Johannesburg, you can actually walk on the stuff.
"You're standing on gold right now," said Charles Symons, chief operating officer for DRDGold, as he surveys a yawning crater 30 meters (90 feet) deep and 250 meters long blasted out of the Elsburg dump to the south of Johannesburg.
"But the specks on your shoe wouldn't buy you a piece of bubble-gum," he says with a laugh as a water cannon...