Climate disasters: Time to return to basics

It is critical that municipalities prioritise the routine maintenance and upgrading of stormwater systems, bridges, roads and essential services

- Zweli Mkhize

On precarious: The sight of dwellings built on a floodplain and thereby placing communities at high risk to life has become commonplace, as evinced by this scene in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga. Photo: GCIS

(GCIS)

On the first day of our oversight visit, we found a single mother of three on the patch of land where her house once stood.

Her face was tear-stained as her children huddled around her. Clearly overwhelmed, she struggled to convey the impact of the floods on her family, yet the devastation in Matsakali village, in the Collins Chabane district in Limpopo, was everywhere around her.

Her family lost everything. The water-soaked mattresses were among the last of their things she had to burn. They could not be used again.

This scene of devastation was just one of many our joint oversight delegation witnessed across districts in Limpopo and Mpumalanga during the first week of February this year.

These oversight visits will also include other disaster-affected provinces in the coming months.

For committee members, the impact of the climate-related disasters is no longer theoretical and abstract.

The delegation saw washed-away roads and bridges that had buckled under the sheer force of floodwaters.

We saw breached stormwater systems and some communities cut off from critical services, such as clinics and schools, following the extreme weather.

A day after we visited Matsakali village, the mayors of the Collins Chabane Local Municipality and the Vhembe District Municipality, under our direction, returned to the village to provide food parcels and other necessities.

Elsewhere in Tshakuma village, in the Makhado Local Municipality, we found houses built on a floodplain, placing this community at unacceptable risk to life.

From our visit, it was clear that the municipality will have to go beyond just temporary repairs and provision of food and other necessities.