South Africa president declares a state of disaster after flooding

The rain has stopped in Durban. The sun has risen and clouds have lifted from the lush green hills.

But people here are only just beginning to process the complete devastation around them.

A week after pounding rain in this coastal region caused one of the deadliest natural disasters in South Africa’s history, the government on Tuesday was plotting an arduous road ahead of cleanup and rebuilding, while still trying to recover dozens of bodies believed to have been buried under mud or washed-out to sea.

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday evening declared a national state of disaster, almost a week to the day after the Durban area was overwhelmed by flooding and mudslides that have killed a confirmed 443 people. About four dozen people remain unaccounted for, Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation, and more than 40,000 have been displaced from their homes. Nearly 4,000 homes have been completely destroyed and more than 8,300 have sustained at least some damage, the president said.

“Tonight, we are a nation united in our grief,” Ramaphosa said.

This was the latest disaster in a string of powerful storms across southern and eastern Africa that have claimed hundreds of lives and razed communities already struggling with poverty. For many, it has underscored the increasing toll of climate change, especially for the most socioeconomically vulnerable, and amplified the need for a more aggressive government response in South Africa and elsewhere to stem the rising number of weather-related fatalities.

“Very often, not just in South Africa, but in many other developing countries as well, there simply isn’t the money, there’s not the expertise and there isn’t the government will to invest properly in protecting the poorest in society,” said Jasper Knight, a professor of physical geography at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Much of the death and destruction occurred in settlements of flimsy shacks constructed by people who could not otherwise afford stable housing. Some took place in communities of small, cube-like homes that sit in valleys near rivers or cling to hillsides.

Throughout eThekwini, the municipality that includes Durban and many surrounding suburbs, apocalyptic scenes were on display.

In the township of Inanda, north of Durban, a bend in a road came to an abrupt end where a bridge had collapsed, leaving a gap about half the size of a football field with a drop-off of hundreds of feet.

At the bottom of a slope beside the bridge sat a jumble of boulders, corrugated metal sheets and furniture. Two beams of wood stuck up in the shape of a cross. Residents believe that a family of four is buried beneath the rubble, their cement-block home washed away in an instant by raging water.

Beyond finding those who are still missing, Ramaphosa said the most urgent matters include providing water, food and shelter to people in badly damaged communities; restoring access to the Port of Durban, one of the busiest in Africa, handling 13,000 heavy vehicles per day, and repairing the more than 600 schools that have been damaged.

Officials of the province, KwaZulu-Natal, were expected to deploy 25 water tankers to various communities Tuesday to provide water for the residents there.

This was the third major flooding in the region in the past five years, and the president suggested that it was time to be more strategic about rebuilding.

“We need to increase our investment in climate adaptation measures to better safeguard communities against the effects of climate change,” he said.

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