Durban - The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) believes the eThekwini Municipality’s lack of climate-proofing plans has led to the sewage crisis that holds the city in its grip.
The municipality is facing separate court challenges to compel it to produce a court-approved plan to address the sewage crisis which has taken its toll on businesses, tourism and the economy.
Two floods last year claimed more than 400 lives, left more than 40 000 people displaced and destroyed more than 12 000 homes, including infrastructure such as roads, health centres and schools.
Kershni Ramreddi, SDCEA Energy and Just Transition project officer, said the massive sewer spills that resulted for most of 2022, and which are a continuing issue, flow through rivers on to Durban’s beaches.
“Despite widespread awareness of the extremely high resulting levels, people still swarm to the beloved Durban beaches. This we witnessed in the December holidays, and now over the Easter long weekend.
“The municipality has not responded satisfactorily, revealing extremely poor ‘loss and damage’ management and very weak climateproofing for adaptation and resilience.”
Ramreddi said the government did not prepare for things and the worst impacts were suffered at the local level by poor and marginalised people.
“After massive storms that killed residents in October 2017 and April 2019, government was still not adequately prepared, with improved stormwater drainage, enforcement of housing codes and provision of alternatives to vulnerable shack settlements, roads, railroad tracks and bridges, and emergency response systems.
“The extensive environmental devastation seen in Durban serves as an example of just how serious climate change is and how Durban lacks a robust, well-organised disaster management response.”
Ramreddi said that instead, a swift response to the community’s catastrophe had been mobilised by civil society and the mutual aid and kindness of neighbours.
She said Durban’s role as a “failed climate-resilient city” could be directly attributed to factors such as corruption, political faction-fighting and the lack of disaster risk mitigation, which was witnessed in extremely poor infrastructure maintenance.
Dr Hope Hangwelani, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Built Environment and Development studies, who focuses on town planning, said the city was underprepared for last year’s floods.
“One year on from those floods, we are not climate-resilient, and this is not something that will happen overnight.
“We expect progress in terms of the infrastructure and need to see tangible evidence of this,” said Hangwelani.
In the aftermath of last year’s floods, the South African Local Government Association said it was essential for municipalities to strengthen their disaster-management function as global warming and associated climate change were “projected to cause severe weather patterns that will become a regular occurrence”.
EThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda in February, in response to the litigation against the City, said it would tell the court it needed R109 billion to solve the municipality’s infrastructure challenges.
“If people are going to help us with that, we are more than happy to welcome the intervention,” he said.
Kaunda had said there were issues that were beyond the municipality’s control and the problem was exacerbated by ageing infrastructure.
“If you are taking us to court we cannot change that; we had floods and a flow of rain which was never seen in a hundred years in this city,” he said, adding that the municipality was focused on its plans to tackle the challenges.
“We know what needs to be fixed and we know the interventions that we need to do,” Kaunda said.