UNLIKE Ireland South Africa usually has no weather. Instead, it has a climate. Summers over most of the country are traditionally hot, with thunderstorms bringing much of the annual rainfall, while winters are cool, sunny and dry. Cape Town, on the southern tip, has wet, blustery winters, while Durban on the Indian Ocean coast is hot all year round.
Weather which can be predicted by calendar is not very promising material for conversation, which explains why South African small talk is usually dominated by sport and crime.
This year has been different, however. The skies over southern Africa opened up last October and it has scarcely stopped raining since. In Johannesburg, over 5,000 feet up on the high veldt plateau, people are used to sunny summer mornings, torrential thunder showers every other afternoon and then clear, cool evenings. Instead the rain has come down - vertically and often without so much as a pealffi of thunder - morning, noon, evening and night.
Again unlike Ireland, few people are complaining. After several years of drought the southern African sub continent was bone dry, and the rains were welcome. Last spring - Irish autumn - many South Africans reservoirs were almost empty. The Vaal dam, the main water source for the industrial region around Johannesburg, was down to only 12 per cent capacity.
In the Kruger Park, most of the perennial rivers had dried up. The rains came just in time to save the Sabie River, which had threatened to stop flowing for the first time in recorded history. All over the high veldt bore holes were drying up as the water table sank to a record low, and in the cities local government imposed hose pipe bans on those lucky enough to have running water in the first place.
In some rural areas the army had to begin bringing water by tanker in to poor black villagers, who found themselves without any local supply. There was talk of a national emergency.
Only three months later, all that is forgotten. According to the Department of Water Affairs, rainfall this year has been heavier than normal nobody in South Africa's government seems able to say by how much - and the crisis is over for at least another year.
Many of the dams, including those in the Vaal river system, are full. Farmers are talking about a bumper year - providing there are enough dry days to get the harvest in.
The rains have at times been far too heavy. The drowning of lover 130 people in a flash flood at a squatter cam near Pieiermaritzburg on December 27th made world headlines, and lesser incidents have also caused fatalities.
In the mountain kingdom of, Lesotho the new 185 metre high Katse dam has been filling much more quickly than expected, and the South African authorities, who are building the dam to guarantee future water supplies in the Rand region, are about to begin venting water to stop the new lake spilling over the incomplete structure.
Last weekend, there was some fuss when a Cape Town geophysicist claimed that the weight of water behind the dam could cause earthquakes that would destroy it. He even called for the evacuation of 20,000 Basutho people living in the Maluti Mountains around the dam. In fact, a number of minor earthquakes have already been felt in the area and a 500 metre crack recent appeared in the plateau above it, running right through the village of Ha Mapaleng.
South Africa's Department of Water Affairs has conceded that the pressure in the lake will force water into local fault lines and that the weight of water is likely to cause local settling in the earth's crust, causing some seismic activity. Nevertheless, it claims that the area is geologically stable and that the dam has been built to comfortably withstand earthquakes up to magnitude 6.5. A seismic disaster was theoretically possible but one would expect such an earthquake in the area only once every 2,000 years, said a soothing spokesman.
Traditional African religion often provides supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, and heavy rain is nob exception. Rumour therefore has it that President Nelson Mandela knew what he was doing when he put an Irishman in charge of rain - the Minister for Water Affairs, Prof Kader Asmal, still holds Irish citizenship from his years of exile in Dublin.
Since he was appointed in May, 1994, Prof Asmal has impressed, many with his energy and organisation, transforming water affairs into one of South Africa's most effective service providers. While other departments are still struggling with administrative change, water affairs has already launched into its task of providing accessible clean water to 7 million poor blacks in rural areas and squatter camps.
Prof Asmal has also impressed the political world with his very un South African habit of injecting poetry into his speeches - not surprisingly, Yeats and Heaney seem to be particular favourites. There is even talk that he could be elevated to the foreign affairs portfolio if the present incumbent, the inconspicuous Mr Alfred Nzo, is eased out of office.