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Floods have again ravaged eThekwini’s houses, roads and bridges, killing hundreds of people and forcing thousands to take refuge and seek rescue, to evacuate into community halls, or to stay home. Others are left without homes and belongings in areas without community halls or bridges, and others are still vulnerable. Torrential rains have caused extreme damage to water supply systems and electrical systems.
The death toll has risen to more than 400, far exceeding the city’s 64 deaths in April 2019, when a “rain bomb” unleashed 168mm in 24 hours, causing R1.1-billion in damage. The previous rainfall record was set in October 2017, when 108mm fell. This killed 11 people and caused extensive damage around the harbour.
Monday and Tuesday last week brought 351mm of rain to the area. This was due to the inability to maintain stormwater drainage systems that were inadequate and insufficiently robust civil engineering.
The people hardest hit, because they lack resilience and options, are eThekwini’s poor communities in townships, surrounding rural areas and informal settlements. State housing provision and construction standards for thousands of the city’s residential structures were again revealed as inadequate. Of the city’s 550 informal settlements, at least 164 are located in floodplains.
Could the devastating impacts of this year’s pummeling by “rain bombs” have been expected and defences built? While it was clearly “unusual”, this kind of extreme weather will not seem unusual in the coming years.
Ramaphosa vows comprehensive KZN recovery effort, zero corruption tolerance
Inaction
Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the municipality is often accused in public of being slow to take climate action. Although the Durban Climate Action Plan of 2019 is not urgent, it is based on what climate scientists have been saying for the past decade: South Africa’s location of precipitation will change, making wetter areas dryer and drier. Extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent and more severe. This has been evident in the past when droughts devastated large areas of the country, leaving many without water and threatening their food security.
This is the new normal.
After the 2019 “rain bomb” and again this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa visited poor neighbourhoods to survey the damage, promising the mobilisation of funds to assist people in need.
Activists are still unimpressed by the hypocrisy displayed by leaders with direct coal interests. For more than two decades, they have insisted that the state’s love affair with fossil fuels, mining, high-energy refining and smelting must end. They call for the application of a “polluter pays” principle to raise funds for not only “loss and damage reparations” but also for the necessary climate-proofing investments in poor communities.
There is nearly 50% unemployment. There are plenty of general workers in communities who can be employed to repair and strengthen drainage systems and build safer houses and bridges. They can also restore wetlands and rehabilitate riversine systems to act like a sponge.
Had funding been available beyond the R90-million provided in May-June 2019 to assist with emergency needs (covering just 9% of the April “rain bomb’s” damage), the necessary climate adaptation work could have taken place to help eThekwini cope with last week’s torrential rain and flooding.
After the Covid-19 economic lockdown, in September 2020, Ramaphosa promised to “build back better” by committing the state to hiring 800,000 new workers to assist the more than 1.4 million newly unemployed people. Budget cuts followed the Covid-19 economic lockdown in September 2020. This meant that funding for infrastructure repairs from 2019 was not available and that a transition to help workers affected by climate catastrophe was only a rhetorical promise.
Climate-resilient Investments
What type of climate-resilient investment is required?
A first vital step is improving early warning systems and flood preparedness, since the SA Weather Service admitted it had vastly underestimated the storm’s power.
Constructions that are labour-intensive could include smaller dams and seawalls as well as stronger roads and bridge reinforcements.
Improvements in housing stability are essential for the working-class areas of the City, as well as all structures built on hills or near beaches. Green infrastructure is also needed, including better maintenance and management of floodplains, forests, wetlands, and floodplains.
Over and above its failure to invest in flood-defence and climate-proofing infrastructure, the state — from national to municipal levels — can be charged with negligence for:
- While making only tokenistic mentions to climate change, and not adequately considering extreme weather and temperature rise in future planning, (Durban’s 2019 plan, bizarrely, describes just one flood event every 10 years, defined as 78mm in 24 hours.)
- Durban officials display self-congratulatory smugness given that they are praised for their riverine corridor management strategies (green-zone buffers originally created during apartheid to increase racial residential segregation).
- Exuding silence and inaction on public works opportunities that arise not only in disaster reconstruction, but also when it comes to adaptation infrastructure that will, in turn, save resources, since future extreme storms wouldn’t be as damaging.
- Being arrogant and distant, repeatedly attempting to displace informally housed residents (typically without preferable alternatives), facing serious resistance and then — without any evident change of approach — stating in its Action Plan that high-risk informal settlements on hillsides or next to flood-prone rivers have been identified and will be relocated.
- Fighting intra-ANC turf wars that are not only intra-ANC internal conflicts, which can undermine any effort to shift to renewables. (eThekwini’s stated target is 40% renewable electricity by 2030.)
- Failure to address operational issues, as demonstrated by the sole helicopter that was able to rescue many residents who fled floodwaters and sought refuge on rooftops and in trees.
- Showing no sense of urgency, since most timeframes for Durban’s Climate Action Plan kick in over the next decade or even longer, when preparations for extreme weather events must be an urgent priority.
Given this particular catastrophe, it is up to Durban residents — and all of us in South Africa — to demand of the government that our lives and futures be protected, not neglected. DM
Mary Galvin is an associate professor of anthropology and developmental studies at the University of Johannesburg. Patrick Bond is a professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg. They write in the personal capacity.
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