After a week of solid summer rain, the Vaal Dam is once again comfortably overflowing – well above 100% full and sending a reassuring message to Gauteng’s thirsty taps.

It’s a reminder of just how crucial this vast body of water is. Built in the 1930s and later raised twice to keep up with demand, the Vaal Dam today holds more than 2.6 billion cubic metres of water and underpins the daily lives and industry of South Africa’s economic heartland.

But, as HOT 1027 News’ Al Prodgers reports, half a century ago, some South Africans believed its levels were being influenced by something far more surprising than rainfall or infrastructure: the miniskirt.

Listen to Al Prodgers’ report here:

In the mid-1960s, while London and New York embraced the “swinging sixties”, South Africa was wrestling with its own culture wars. Around the world, the mini was being celebrated as a symbol of youth, freedom and women’s autonomy. In South Africa, it was nicknamed the eina-rokkie and treated by many conservatives as a moral emergency.

By 1967, several universities – including Pretoria and Potchefstroom – banned skirts that sat more than a few centimetres above the knee. Even Wits, known for its more liberal campus culture, imposed restrictions.South Africa Today The backlash extended beyond student dress codes. Preachers thundered from pulpits, parents fretted, and newspaper headlines turned the mini into a national obsession.

One of the loudest voices belonged to Reverend Arthur Sexby, a clergyman who famously refused to conduct services if women arrived in miniskirts. He went on to help form the National Association for Public Morality and Welfare – a pressure group dedicated to what it called “crushing the evils of the mini”.

In the heat of this moral panic came a claim so peculiar it has passed into urban-legend territory: that the Vaal Dam would never fill properly while women persisted in wearing short skirts. Only once hemlines dropped, the argument went, would the heavens open.

Of course, South Africans now know that dam levels respond to weather patterns, river inflows and careful water management – not wardrobe choices. Modern data shows how quickly the Vaal can swing from concerning lows during drought to more than 120% after heavy rains and upstream transfers.

Yet the story of the eina-rokkie and the Vaal Dam remains a wonderfully odd snapshot of its time. It captures a South Africa in transition: a country trying to hold on to rigid ideas about gender and morality, even as global fashion and youth culture seeped through the cracks. Similar battles over skirts and “decency” played out elsewhere on the continent too – from campus rules to full-blown laws restricting women’s clothing.

Today, as the dam spills over after generous rain, HOT1027’s Al Prodgers revisits this quirky chapter in our social history – a reminder of how much has changed, and how strange some old anxieties look in the rear-view mirror.

References

• • When South Africa thought short skirts could stop the rain – HOT1027 News

  • Video: Vaal Dam Versus the Mighty Mini Skirt – South Africa Today

  • Vaal Dam – History and facts (Wikipedia)

  • Life below the Vaal Dam in a changing climate – Daily Maverick

  • The Politics of the Miniskirt (and hippies) in Africa – Medium

  • History of Women’s Struggle in South Africa – South African History Online