Water Wheel July/August 2022: Water Heritage

Abstract

Exploring the large footprint of South Africa’s ‘smallest’ river Rivers are the lifeblood of South Africa. Most of the country’s water requirements are met from the roughly 160 000 km of river length that crisscrosses the country. This network densifies and increases in volume from the arid west to the wetter east of South Africa. The country’s longest river, the Orange, shoulders intensive economic development along its course from Lesotho to Alexander Bay on the West Coast, but even our smallest river has supported generations of communities settled on its banks. The title of South Africa’s smallest river is debatable, but one that is claimed to be exactly that is the Klein River (‘Klein’ literally meaning ‘small’), which runs from the northern slopes of the Kleinriver Mountain Range in the Overberg to the Klein River Lagoon or Kleinriversvlei between Stanford and Hermanus. The river’s claim to fame is the shortest distance between its origin and mouth in the world – a mere five kilometers as the crow flies, although the river itself is about 80 km long.

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