The rains, which killed about 400 people and left thousands homeless in South Africa this week, began hitting the East Coast again on Saturday, threatening new floods and forcing many to take refuge in community centers and town halls.
Heavy rains in KwaZulu-Natal province have already cut power lines, cut off water supplies and disrupted operations in one of Africa’s busiest ports, Durban, the capital of the East Coast.
In Umlazi, one of the country’s largest cities south of Durban, flood victims huddled under blankets in a public hall, while others formed long queues to distribute food and water donated to charities.
“What makes me angry is that this situation always happens,” Mlungeli Mkokelva, a 53-year-old man who arrived in the village a decade ago to look for a job he never found, told Reuters TV.
“Our possessions continue to be destroyed by continuous floods, which must be addressed by the authorities. No one ever returns with a plan to resolve it.”
What is happening in KwaZulu-Natal is a catastrophe of enormous proportions, such as we have never seen before. pic.twitter.com/5M34XOiFfa
– @ CyrilRamaphosa
Climate change activists are calling for investment to help communities around the world better prepare for the worsening weather, as the south-east coast of Africa is expected to see stronger storms and floods involving human beings in the coming decades. emissions of heat-trapping gases.
While the east coast has been hit by more severe rainstorms, other drier parts of the country have been hit by devastating floods in recent years, also blamed for climate change, which has destroyed crops and brought water to normal.
The last rains, which left at least 40,000 people homeless, without electricity or water this week, are expected to continue until early next week.
“We have no water, no electricity, even our phones are dead. We’re stuck, “said Gloria Linda, sheltering under a large umbrella by a muddy road in her town of Kwandengezi, about 30 kilometers inland from Durban, before meandering down a dirt road to the funeral of a friend killed in the floods.
People are standing near the remains of a building that was destroyed in a flood that killed several people in Kwandengezi, near Durban, South Africa, on Saturday. (Rogan Ward / Reuters)
Elsewhere in Kwandengezi, a family stood in the rain watching their collapsed metal shed, one of several houses in ruins.
State television SABC reported on Saturday that the death toll was now 398, with 27 people still unaccounted for. In places devastated by floods, many relatives are searching just to find the bodies of the victims for burial.
“We called the police, we called the ambulance, we called the fire department, and none of them answered in time,” Musi Mzobe, 59, a professional landlord in Kwandengezi, told Reuters in front of a pile of rubble – what’s left of a house. which he rents out to tenants who were killed in it.
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