By Fidelis Zvomuya
SEKHUKHUNE, South Africa (AlertNet) - The sun is setting on another scorching hot day in this rural district in South Africa's northern Limpopo province.
Thombi Masondo is busy working under the baking sun on her 10-acre farm. But her crops are being lost scarcely before they have a chance to break the soil.
The area, dry in the best of times, is experiencing the longest-ever rainless stretch in its history.
Masondo, a 57-year-old widow, doesnÂ?t give up. She keeps an expectant eye on the skies, hoping the rains will come soon before the summer rainy season ends in March.
"This is a matter of death. (Whether we can) adapt to these climate changes will help decide whether millions of us rural farmers live or die," she said.
Southern Africa, long vulnerable to drought, has seen worsening dry spells as climate change takes hold across the region, expert say.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that the region will see more frequent and intense droughts that could compromise its ability to grow sufficient food, a particular worry for people already battling widespread poverty and the world's most severe HIV/AIDS crisis.
Constansia Musvoto, a researcher with the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, says southern Africa will be one of the world's regions most affected by climate change.
HIGHER TEMPERATURES, MORE DRY SPELLS
Higher temperature and an increased prevalence of dry spells, as well as more intense rainfall when rains come, will have tremendous effects on agriculture and the availability of clean water, she said.
"Southern Africa will be hit heavily by climate change over the next 70 years," she said. "Agricultural production is projected to be halved, a development that will threaten the livelihoods of farmers in a region where 70 percent of the population is smallholder farmers."
Already, changes in climate patterns - rising temperatures, delayed and unreliable rainfall, soil erosion, more severe drought - have made it difficult for small-scale farmers to continue growing primary food crops such as maize and beans in her drought-vulnerable area, Masondo said.
"The majority of us here have no resources to cope with the situation," she said. "If we don't make changes, we will not survive."
The gray-haired mother of five scrapes out a living growing crops that she sells at the nearest market to raise money to send her children and some of her grandchildren to school.
Her husband died of AIDS in 2004, and the disease has claimed two of her daughters as well, leaving her to look after their three orphaned children.
She said she had seen weather conditions change substantially over 30 years, with rains often starting a month later than they formerly did.
Then, "when it comes, it rains and rains continuously for almost a week, which is bad for our crops. The weather patterns have gone completely the opposite of what it was 30 years ago," she said.
Heavy intense rains over a short period can result in floods that destroy houses and wash away fields, roads and bridges, Masondo said.
"It's difficult for us here, especially we single mothers. We rely on agriculture as our life line," she said.
Worsening droughts and floods, and problems like environmental degradation and worsening pest resistance to chemicals, are worsening poverty in an area already suffering a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, she said.
She points to three cows dozing nearby, as the distant bleating of goats floats through the still community.
The cows, she says, are the only ones left after more than 13 of her herd died as a result of drought over the past four years. The area as a whole lost "thousands of cows" over the period, she said.
"This drought we are in now is terrible," she said, carrying a hatchet slung over her shoulder to cut shrubs as fodder for the animals.
With food production plunging and farmland turning into desert, the result is more and more deaths from hunger, she said.
Sekhukhune has been designed by South Africa's president a poverty hotspot, red flagged for its perennial droughts, unpredictable weather, poverty, poor infrastructure, high unemployment, limited resources and economic depression.
Under a national assistance program, it is due to get help to improve roads, supply electricity and create economic cooperatives.
For now, however, unemployment is high with most people relying on agriculture as their source of income.
Evidence shows that rainfall variability in the region has notably changed since the 1960s, according to Muchadei Mukonori, a Pretoria-based climate expert and consultant.
GROWING WEATHER VARIABILITY
Mukonori said greater annual variability in the region's weather, particularly in the form of more intense and widespread droughts, suggests the country is locked into decades of temperature rise and the associated climate impacts.
"More is to come if we don't mitigate and adapt. You can see there is drought in Limpopo and Western Cape and at the same time we have floods in Gauteng, Free State and Mpumalanga," she said, running through problems in a variety of South African provinces.
According to Musvoto, by the turn of the next century temperatures are expected to increase by up to 6 degrees Celsius, while rainfall will drop by as much as 40 percent in some parts of the region.
"As a result, the region will experience more and longer droughts, increased crop failures and have less fields and pastures due to water shortages," she said.
Already, the southern African region has seen an increase in natural disasters and pest outbreaks for both crops and livestock have become more frequent.
Musvoto also predicts that climate change will bring more health problems in southern Africa.
"Due to rising temperatures, malaria will spread more widely, for example, which will negatively affect the availability of farm labour," she explained.
Crop production figures reflect the growing problems. In 2006, the production of maize, the main staple crop in the region, fell short of expectations by 2.18 million metric tonnes due to droughts in Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and South Africa, she said.
Masondo says leaving her farm is unthinkable. But climate change, she says, a term few people in her area understand, is for most already a reality they know well.
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