This book tells the story of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). It is a tale of international diplomacy and the ways high politics and the anti-apartheid struggle played out in daily lives in Lesotho and South Africa. It is the story of success—the project delivers hundreds of millions of cubic metres a year of water from Lesotho to Gauteng. It is also the story of failure—people in communities in both countries lack access to water have not experienced the post-apartheid world they envisioned. These communities mirror the divide between the haves and the have-nots from the apartheid era. This breeds widespread dissatisfaction with the LHWP. Water is a common source of service delivery protest and the LHWP is emblematic of the problems officials face in getting these services to communities in need. Popular dissatisfaction also rests on the fact that the LHWP treaty was signed in 1986 between the undemocratic apartheid regime in Pretoria and a military regime in Maseru. The book tells the story of the twenty-year negotiations, and the Cold War and anti-apartheid struggles that shaped them. Soweto. American sanctions. Guerrilla war. Township unrest. The LHWP negotiations were about a local project and were also about the geopolitical battles of the late 20th century. Focusing the book on water issues, displacement, and service delivery will resonate strongly in a Southern African region struggling with the provision of basic services. People still do not trust governments to work in their interests and feel fundamental post-apartheid changes have yet to be made. Thirty years after the formal end of apartheid, the ramifications of the racial discrimination and non-democratic processes of that time live on in the inability of poor residents of Lesotho and Gauteng to access the ‘White Gold’ that daily flows from Lesotho to Johannesburg.