  The MeerKAT (64 x 13.5m dish radio interferometer) is South Africa's
precursor instrument for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), exploring dish
design, instrumentation, and the characteristics of a Karoo desert site and is
projected to be on sky in 2016. One of two top-priority, Key Projects is a
single deep field, integrating for 5000 hours total with the aim to detect
neutral atomic hydrogen through its 21 cm line emission out to redshift unity
and beyond.
  This first truly deep HI survey will help constrain fueling models for galaxy
assembly and evolution. It will measure the evolution of the cosmic neutral gas
density and its distribution over galaxies over cosmic time, explore evolution
of the gas in galaxies, measure the Tully-Fisher relation, measure OH maser
counts, and address many more topics.
  Here we present the observing strategy and envisaged science case for this
unique deep field, which encompasses the Chandra Deep Field-South (and the
footprints of GOODS, GEMS and several other surveys) to produce a singular
legacy multi-wavelength data-set.
