The pandemic coincided with the construction of the Vaal River Barrage. Between 300 and 600 workers, primarily Black South Africans, were employed. There were 49 white workers – two thirds of them were skilled carpenters. All worked on site, close to Lindeques’ Drift. Side by side they completed  one of South Africa’s premier water infrastructure facilities of its day.
The Barrage was intended as a weir, with controlled water releases for downstream water users. In addition the weir had to have a one-track bridge for road transport. The built-in national road, was a key component of the British Imperial authority’s Cape-to-Cairo route northwards through South Africa.
Documents in Rand Water’s archives at Glen Vista, report on frequent labour stoppages at the Barrage construction site. Already in 1916 African migrant labourers, departed for their rural homesteads for the planting season. By 1917 labour scouts secured workers from Umzikulu, Klerksdorp and as far afield as Herschel in the Eastern Cape. Some war veterans in 1918 soon joined the Barrage construction team. All were accommodated on what is today the Gauteng side of the Vaal.
According to Rand Water’s archival documents, workers on site suffered from bouts of malaria, food poisoning and a scarlet fever outbreak. From July 1918 there were also influenza cases. By October 1918 the project’s chief engineer, reported that the number of workers on site had dropped by 217. We do not know if they fell victim to influenza.
Maybe one third of the water sector workers at the Barrage site had become part of the country’s influenza fatalities.
In Vereeniging, the new burgeoning industrial hub on the banks of the Vaal River, reports of the flu, the 1918 report of the Vereeniging Estates company was positive on progress at the Maccauvlei plantations and orchards.
The grim statistic of the influenza pandemic, was indirectly reported in the ‘collieries’ section of the report. The output of 581 296 Imperial tons of coal was 11 000 tons less than in 1917. How many miners died, we are not told.  Statistics, then like now, are always incomplete.
The annual report of the then national Department of Irrigation for 1918, also tells the grim story of water sector workers and water users, at various construction sites and water storage facilities in the country.
Highly skilled water sector engineers, managers, officials and local residents, familiar with valuable knowledge about local departmental operations, became part of the mortality statistics.
Also communities dependant on the state’s irrigation water infrastructure, in other parts of the country, were at the receiving end. The department’s report for 1918 tells the grim story of Brandvlei, in the Cape, where local farmers had taken ill, while ‘over-ripe crops had to be left standing on the fields’. The number of fatalities were not disclosed.
Today the Barrage structure is a veritable symbol of water sector workers’ determination and dedication to improving the lives of thousands of water users in a time of the 1918 influenza pandemic. They were at their posts in critical times.
Spare a thought for today’s water workers who continue to work at the time of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
- Johann Tempelhoff is an extraordinary professor at North-West University’s Vanderbijlpark campus.
