“You have experienced the biggest tragedy you have ever seen,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told traumatised and grieving communities on Wednesday as the death toll from KwaZulu-Natal’s floods shot up to 259.
Ramaphosa visited areas of the eThekwini municipality that were devastated by the floods unleashed by Monday’s torrential downpours. Mudslides washed away roads and cut off railway lines in one of the country’s busiest ports.
He likened the crisis, which left more than 7,000 people homeless and seeking refuge in churches and community halls, to severe flooding in places such as Mozambique and tragedies in Zimbabwe.
Ramaphosa, who was greeted with cries for help from families who lost loved ones, including 10 people from one family, cut short his African trip to offer support to affected communities and personally assess the response of the government to the situation.
The provincial government has declared the region a disaster area and is finalising the disaster management plan. It is working with affected communities to find missing people.
“You have experienced the biggest tragedy you have ever seen,” Ramaphosa told residents in the Durban township of Clermont, while he was in the company of co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, premier Sihle Zikalala and the newly elected chair of the eThekwini ANC region and former mayor, Zandile Gumede.
“What is painful is that a lot of people have died. Their homes have been destroyed, streets, towns and this church have been destroyed.
“So, we said let’s go to the areas to see the damage ourselves to see how the government can help,” he said.
Power stations and water reticulation systems were damaged, leaving some communities without electricity and water.
The disaster management department in KwaZulu-Natal, of which Durban is the largest city and economic nucleus, urged people to be careful when travelling on the roads and ordered those residing in low-lying areas to move to higher ground.
Though scientists have not explicitly linked the flooding to climate change, the southeast coast of Africa has long been on the list of areas on the front line of worsening climate change-induced weather systems.
The catastrophe could also heap pressure on the government to play a bigger role in reducing global emissions after a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a warning that weather disasters are set to grow much worse if measures to curb emissions from the use of fossil fuel worldwide are not dramatically stepped up.
It is also the latest blow to the insurance industry, which is still counting the costs of paying out billions of rand in claims stemming from the pandemic.
“It is still early days to determine the quantum/size of the damage but from initial assessments it looks like it runs into hundreds of millions of rand, if not more,” said Lizo Mnguni, spokesperson for Old Mutual’s short-term insurance unit.
Retailer Pepkor said one of its warehouses in Durban was closed after it “sustained significant damage”, while paper maker Sappi halted output at three mills in the province.
Carmaker Toyota suspended output at its Prospecton plant
after it became waterlogged.
Looting
Transnet gradually resumed operations at the Port of Durban in the morning, with risk assessments being undertaken to ensure the safety of employees and infrastructure.
But the snarl-up of trucks on the N3 between Durban and SA’s economic hub, Johannesburg, has triggered low-level opportunistic looting.
“The Marianhill plaza has a backlog of 10km all the way to Hammarsdale and the problem is that (according to the Road Traffic Inspectorate) the local communities are now looting trucks,” said Gavin Kelly, CEO of the Road Freight Association.
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