Swaziland report / Commonwealth Relations Office.

  • Great Britain. Office of Commonwealth Relations.
Date:
[1959]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Swaziland report / Commonwealth Relations Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    125/156 (page 107)
    13)000 aeies at Palata - Mhlababovu, in one of tbe Swazi held blocks of land, there is the most complete rehabili¬ tation scheme functioning’ as yet in the Territory - planned re-siting of arable and grazing lands and of dwelling-huts. The only township, Stegi, has a population of some 300 Europeans, 175 Eurafricans and 2,200 Afri¬ cans. Swaziland Rivers In their journey to the sea, Swaziland’s major rivers traverse all four regions. They warrant a section of this chapter devoted entirely to their description, for this is one of the best watered areas in Southern Africa. The Lowveld and Midd]eveld ever-increasingly draw on their reaches of rivers for supplies of irrigation water, while the Highveld and Middleveld are on the verge of hydro¬ electric development: there are already small schemes providing power to Mbabane and Bremersdorp townships and to some of the few industrial organisations, such as a chipboard factory and a sawmill at Pigg’s Peak. Nearly all Plighvelcl streams, even streams only a few miles in length are perennial. In contrast, the water¬ courses of the Lowveld, other than the trunk rivers, whilst they appear to be commodious enough, are only fi'led after heavy rainstorms and are “tihubodla” (dry channels in the fashion of wadis) at other times. From the highveld, the Lomati, Komafi, Mbuluzi, Usushwana (or Little Usutu), Usutu (or Great Usutu), Ingwempisi and Mkhondo (or Assegai), fed by countless minor streams, flow in a generally eastward direction towards the Indian Ocean. The Usutu has the greatest volume and rises in the Transvaal, within a few yards of headwaters of the Vaal (which drains to the Atlantic). Ninety miles in a straight line to the east, having served Malkerns irrigation scheme received all its peren¬ nial tributaries and breached the Bulunga poort leading from the Middleveld to Lowveld, it is, at Siphofaneni bridge, an impressively broad river with a mean flow that can be estimated conservatively at 1,400 cusecs. In the Lowveld the intermittent, occasionally-in-spate Mzimpofu, Mhlatuzane, Mtindzekwa and Mhlatuze Rivers all join the Usutu which swings in wide loops through Little Bend (canal out-take) and Big Bend to its exit from the Territory at Abercorn which is only 70