After the heyday of apartheid-era dam-building, a water conservation approach now holds sway, but social demands and politics could change this. Meanwhile, the country’s rivers are all under threat, writes Graeme Addison.

THE LITTLE ORANGE, OR SENQUNYANE RIVER, IS A DEEP GASH IN THE rumpled back of the Maluti mountains of Lesotho, a profoundly lonesome canyon in a neglected realm of Africa far from tourists and dam engineers. The sharp voices of herdboys ring from the heights, shouting with surprise to see you navigating the rapids far below. In the mid-nineties I led a rafting expedition for a group of scientists from the lodge at Marakabei to the confluence with the Orange, or Senqu, some four days downriver. We were writing the epitaph for one of Africa’s wild places.