Southern Africa has been experiencing one of the worst droughts of the century. Due to an unusual shortfall of rain during late 1991 and early 1992, the Republic of South Africa held a National Drought Emergency Conference on June 13-14, 1992. The conference established a National Consultative Forum on the Drought (NCFD) and five task forces, one of which was the Water Supply Task Force (WSTF). The WSTF appealed to international agencies to provide engineers and technicians with experience in drought relief work. The United States Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), in response to a request from the USAID mission in the Republic of South Africa, asked the Water and Sanitation for Health (WASH) Project to provide emergency technical assistance to support the WSTF. WASH's task was to support WSTF in meeting the potable water needs of the most severely drought-stricken areas of the country. It was assumed that this drought relief effort would be largely restricted to the TBVC states and self-governing territories within the RSA, which are commonly referred to as "homelands."