Without means of storage with water tanks, it’s hard to understand how people were able to cope. Mmopane, Gabane and Moshupa, not least, were without water for weeks on end.
Why was this not declared a disaster area? Or wasn’t it sufficiently disastrous? Some businesses would appear to have made a killing from these curious weeks of either far too much or far too little. Have we ever before seen people queuing to buy six or more 10 litre bottles of purified water? And then there were those rushing to buy air conditioners for the first time, fans, humidifiers, air coolers, and deep freezers whilst the chemists must have run out of stock of salt pills and sun cream. How many people, I wonder, were overcome by heat and had to be given treatment? Probably we will never know. But how did people in the past cope with heat? For a start, they slept outside which only rarely happens today. They could do so because there were then fewer crooks - but that may have been because people had few household items which were worth stealing. The old stores may not have had vastly expensive refrigerated rooms but they did have very effective evaporation cool rooms.
