The Eye of Kuruman

Die Oog, the Eye, is a natural spring in the middle of Kuruman that delivers something in the region of twenty million litres of water a day - a figure that means little until you stand in the surrounding Kalahari and realise how dry everything else is. Water comes from a dolomite aquifer, emerges clear and constant, and has done so through droughts that emptied everything else in the district; it is usually described as the strongest natural spring in the southern hemisphere. That reliability is why the town exists at all, and why the London Missionary Society established a station at Kuruman in the 1820s under Robert Moffat, whose printing press produced the first Setswana Bible. The spring is now enclosed in a small walled garden with fish in the pool and shade trees, feeding a stream that supplies the town and irrigates gardens downstream.

History

Tswana herders first used the spring as a water hole and call it Segonyana, and in 1895, the only time on record, its stream ran all the way down the Kuruman, Molopo and Orange rivers to the Atlantic. The spring yields about 20,000 cubic metres a day and was declared a Provincial Heritage Site in 1992 (Wikipedia, Eye of Kuruman).

Highlights

• The flow - around twenty million litres a day emerging in semi-desert.
• The dolomite aquifer - a source that held through droughts which emptied everything else.
• The walled garden - the spring enclosed with shade trees and fish in the pool.
• The reason for the town - a settlement and mission that exist because of this water.

When to go

All year. One hour. It is a short stop on the way to the Kgalagadi or Upington.

Practical notes

It is a small enclosed pool in a town garden - impressive as a fact, modest as a sight. There is a fee and limited facilities. Kuruman itself is a working mining-district town, not a tourist destination.

Nearby

The Moffat Mission is in the same town; Witsand is south-west.

Key facts