Katse Dam is one of those structures that take your breath away: a 185-metre concrete wall wedged between mountains, holding back a blue reservoir that snakes like a fjord through the valleys of the Maluti range, at almost 2.000 metres above sea level. It is one of the tallest dams in Africa and the engineering jewel of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, the ambitious plan that turned the water of Lesotho's mountains into its great export resource.
But Katse isn't just concrete: the journey there, on mountain roads that climb dizzying passes such as Mafika-Lisiu, is one of the great scenic drives in southern Africa. Along the way you cross the Bokong reserve, with its high-altitude views, and on arrival a deep-water reservoir surrounded by bare peaks awaits. Next to the wall, a visitor centre explains the project and runs guided tours of the dam.
This guide takes you through Katse with a practical eye: how to get there on the mountain roads, the guided tour of the wall and the visitor centre, the botanical gardens that protect the rare spiral aloe —Lesotho's national flower—, and where to sleep and eat in the village. It's the perfect destination for combining alpine nature, gigantic landscapes and colossal engineering in the heart of the kingdom.
Katse Dam was built between 1991 and 1996 (with the reservoir filling in 1997 and water starting to flow to South Africa in January 1998) as the centrepiece of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, an agreement between Lesotho and South Africa signed in 1986. The idea, identified as early as 1953 by the engineer Ninham Shand, was to harness the abundant water of Lesotho's highlands to supply South Africa's thirsty industrial region of Gauteng, in exchange for revenue and electricity for the kingdom. Its full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The water tower of southern Africa: the great Katse Dam and its mountain reservoirs, the village of the 'place of smoke' and the dizzying drop of the Maletsunyane Falls.
Read the history of The central highlands →They depart from Maseru, 99 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Lesotho is poor in almost everything, but extremely rich in one resource: water. Its highlands, a massif more than 3.000 metres high, receive plenty of rain and snow, and they are the source of powerful rivers such as the Orange (Senqu), the longest in southern Africa. Yet all that water flowed down from the mountains and was lost on its way to the ocean, while just across the border, in South Africa, the industrial region of Gauteng (Johannesburg, Pretoria and the country's economic heart) suffered from chronic shortages.
The idea of making use of that imbalance is an old one. As early as 1953, the South African civil engineer Ninham Shand proposed transferring water from the Lesotho highlands to the Witwatersrand to supply its industry. The project was technically enormous and politically delicate, since it involved two countries with tense relations in the apartheid era, and it stayed on the shelf for decades.
Over time, Gauteng's growing thirst and Lesotho's interest in earning income and electricity made the project irresistible. In 1986 both countries signed the treaty that gave birth to the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), one of the largest water transfer schemes in the world, whose flagship work would be the Katse Dam.
The Lesotho Highlands Water Project Treaty, signed in 1986, set up an elegant exchange: Lesotho would build dams and tunnels to capture the water from its mountains and send it to South Africa; in return, it would receive substantial royalties per cubic metre of water transferred and could generate its own hydroelectric power. For a kingdom without significant mineral resources, water thus became its main source of foreign currency.
The project was divided into several phases. Phase 1A was built around the Katse Dam, on the Malibamat'so River, and a 45-kilometre transfer tunnel that carries the water north to South Africa, later adding the 'Muela hydropower station to supply Lesotho with electricity. Later phases would add the Mohale Dam and, more recently, the Polihali Dam.
The agreement was not free of controversy. Construction meant displacing entire communities whose land and villages ended up under water, with heavily disputed compensation, and there were allegations of corruption in the awarding of contracts that ended in high-profile international trials. Even so, the LHWP went ahead as one of the most important infrastructure projects in Africa.
The Katse Dam was built between 1991 and 1996, in the heart of the Maluti mountains, in one of the most remote and difficult settings imaginable. Getting there meant opening hundreds of kilometres of new mountain roads (the same ones travellers use today) across passes higher than 3.000 metres. It was a huge feat of engineering and logistics.
The result is a double-curvature concrete arch wall 185 metres high with a 710-metre crest, made with more than 2,3 million cubic metres of concrete. It is the second-highest dam in Africa and the highest-altitude dam on the continent, with its crest almost 2.000 metres above sea level. Its double-arch design lets it withstand the enormous pressure of the water by bracing itself against the sides of the valley.
The reservoir began filling in 1997 and, on 22 January 1998, the transfer of water to South Africa officially began. A deep artificial lake had been created, long and branching like a fjord. Today it holds almost 2.000 million cubic metres, and it completely transformed the landscape and the economy of Lesotho's central highlands.
Creating the reservoir came at an environmental cost: as the valleys flooded, a strip of unique Afro-alpine flora, adapted to the harsh conditions of Lesotho's high mountains, ended up under water. To save part of that botanical heritage, the Katse Botanical Gardens were created in 1995, at about 2.230 metres above sea level, next to the village of Katse.
The garden covers about 17 hectares of terraced slopes and worked as a botanical ark: species rescued from the areas about to be flooded were transplanted and conserved there. Today it protects more than 500 species of native plants (proteas, aloes, lilies, 'red-hot pokers' and many more) and is a conservation centre for the kingdom's mountain flora.
Its jewel is the spiral aloe (Aloe polyphylla), Lesotho's national flower: a succulent found only in these mountains, whose grey leaves form a perfect geometric spiral that you can't mistake for anything else. It is threatened in its natural habitat, and the Katse gardens give it a refuge where visitors can admire it and even buy cultivated plants. So, alongside the engineering work, Katse is also home to an effort to preserve the life that the dam itself put at risk.
More than a quarter of a century after it opened, the Katse Dam is still the centrepiece of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and one of the kingdom's main sources of income: South Africa pays Lesotho tens of millions of dollars a year in royalties for the water transferred, money that is vital for a country with a small economy. On top of that, the 'Muela station supplies electricity to a large part of the kingdom.
Over time, Katse also became a travel destination. The LHWP visitor centre welcomes travellers from all over the world, offers guided tours of the wall and its galleries, and explains one of Africa's great engineering works. The reservoir offers boat trips and fishing, the botanical gardens draw nature lovers, and the journey itself along the mountain roads has become one of the most celebrated scenic routes in southern Africa.
Today the project keeps growing with new phases, such as the Polihali Dam upstream, which will expand the water transfer. Katse, however, is still the symbol of the whole scheme: proof that the 'blue gold' of Lesotho's mountains can support a kingdom's economy and, along the way, give travellers one of the most astonishing high-mountain landscapes in Africa.
