Human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi says more needs to be done to resettle hundreds of thousands of South Africans in response to climate change.
She confirmed one person died and six others were injured in torrential rains and a tornado that struck in KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday.
The eThekwini Municipality said search teams had responded to more than 100 calls to rescue people trapped in their homes.
Another two people were injured when strong winds blew over a container shop in Inanda, north of Durban, according to KwaZulu-Natal emergency services.
The National Sea and Rescue Institute said its members helped rescue a 51-year-old motorist from a tree in Pinetown after he managed to escape from his vehicle that was washed off a bridge.
“When people talk about responses to climate change and financing, they don’t talk about resettlement of communities and [damage to] houses that are caused by climate change. We continue that fight as the national department of human settlements,” Kubayi said after a visit to affected communities in the province.
She said she had raised the issue at the UN, where she said that as global communities, we needed to start pushing for financing for resettlement of communities affected by disasters and climate change.
Though the 2022 floods in KwaZulu-Natal resulted in more than 540 deaths, many stormwater drains in Durban were still visibly clogged, resulting in main roads flooding and leaving dozens of cars floating or submerged in water, and extensive damage to paving and roads.
That flood, just over a year ago, devastated the KwaZulu-Natal economy, resulting in water shedding in some parts of the province and the closure of beaches in SA’s second-most populous province.
Many houses, schools, roads and bridges remain in a state of disrepair.
In 2022, the national department of human settlements gave R325m to the provincial department for the provision of emergency housing solutions.
The director of the Global Change Institute at Wits, Prof Francois Engelbrecht, said the science was clear — there is a detectable increase in extreme rainfall in KwaZulu-Natal as a result of a warming globe, and government needed to do more.
“In the short term we need to learn to evacuate people out of danger. Incidents can be predicted about three days before the event. For this to happen we need to develop evacuation managements plans and better early warning signals. In the long term we need to make people more resilient to climate change and that means better town planning and economic development that takes people out of the path of harm,” Engelbrecht said.
He said the danger in upcoming months in SA was extreme heatwaves, which in countries such as Spain and Portugal have resulted in dozens dying in 2023.
“Climate change is also making heatwaves stronger. Our cities need to prepare in terms of heat health plans,” Engelbrecht said.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.