Few can dispute that KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape provinces need all the help they can get to repair the damage caused by the worst flooding in almost three decades that left more than 400 people dead.
The deluge affected tens of thousands of people, the worst since 1987, when powerful mudslides buried thousands of homes, damaged schools and health clinics.
Infrastructure such as roads and bridges, as well as power lines, water supplies and telecommunications towers, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, have been washed out or knocked down. The flooding also hit operations at clothes retailer Pepkor, forced Toyota to suspend production and damaged paper group Sappi’s facilities.
It initially seemed that it was going to an humanitarian and economic crisis confined to KwaZulu-Natal, but its effect on the Port of Durban had wider consequences. This is one of Africa’s busiest ports. Its strategic location on international shipping routes makes it SA’s main cargo and container port.
“The significance of the Port of Durban and related infrastructure for the effective operation of the country’s economy means that this disaster has implications far beyond the province of KwaZulu-Natal,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday as he reinstated the national state of disaster aimed at salvaging the situation.
In democratic state like ours, it never comes naturally for one to endorse the invocation of the state of disaster, which essentially means a handful of men and women would make up the national disaster management centre, accountable only to each other, to wield sweeping powers.
We have seen how some politicians used the recently lifted national state of disaster to navigate the challenges posed by Covid-19 to test their experiment with dictatorial regimes, instituting unscientific and irrational decisions.
Still, the havoc wreaked by the floods that also produced powerful and fatal mudslides, alongside forecasts from the SA Weather Service that the North West and Free State will be the next provinces affected by bad weather in coming weeks, means SA’s response should be centralised, swift, and free of bureaucratic red tape. The two provinces are the agricultural heartland, producing most of our maize, the most important grain consumed by the majority of the population and also used as major feed for animals.
The government pledge to put together a R1bn relief package will clearly not be enough as the floods affected more than 13,000 households, destroyed R5.6bn of road infrastructure, 4,000 houses and more than 550 schools. From where we stand, it makes sense to suspend red tape hurdles to immediately release funding to repair damage in the province that is reeling from the looting rampage and rioting that left hundreds of people dead and hit operations for businesses such as Massmart and Spar.
That said, it is worth asking if we could have avoided being thrown into this situation. KwaZulu-Natal and the rest of Africa’s southeastern coast is among the regions in the world that are on the front line of climate change induced worsening seaborne weather systems.
Though authorities are quick to blame everything on climate change, expert commentators have been rightly pointing out the failure of the government to maintain adequate stormwater drainage systems in some areas and the defences against the worsening weather patterns.
In 2019, Durban became the first African city to produce a Climate Action Plan, which outlines a path towards building resilience against worsening weather and it is aligned with the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions. As laudable as the plan may be, it would be hard to argue with anyone that it rings hollow without tangible commitment to swiftly implement it.
As scientists warned in recent weeks in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, extreme weather events will become more common and more intense in coming decades. The catastrophe in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape should jolt the government into action to build stronger defences.
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