Adelaide, Eastern Cape, up in arms over flood response

Floods in the Eastern Cape have wreaked havoc across the province. Picture: Supplied/ Chris Hani District Municipality

Floods in the Eastern Cape have wreaked havoc across the province. Picture: Supplied/ Chris Hani District Municipality

Published Apr 11, 2023

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Imameleng Masitha

Adelaide residents are growing weary of the measures taken to respond to frequent floods.

Aside from causing havoc in the community, the rain also affected cell phone signal in the area. As a result, people have been unable to contact the district municipal office.

Rural Action for Climate Resilience (RACR) speaks with Nobhelu Balangile from the Katanga Advice Office in Adelaide.

She explains that gifts from donors and social development occasionally come to the community, but it doesn’t help in the long run.

“Now that we know how the winter flooding affects us, we need to talk to the community and devise a plan to protect ourselves,” she says, adding that they want to be involved in civil protection and district offices for the community’s best interests.

According to Balangile, the weather forecast a week before the floods indicated an 80% chance of rain in the area. However, she says it was much more cloudy than usual when the rain came, and it never stopped.

“Heavy rains were pouring down from the mountains, creating ruts. We know that when it rains, the streets and houses get flooded,” says Balangile.

According to Adelaide residents, the municipality and disaster management visited the area a year ago. However, nothing had been fixed; churches and schools remained in a disaster state, and the building materials provided were insufficient.

“Our leaders do not respond to the reports we send. The drainage problem during heavy rain is always tricky because they do not get serviced or cleaned,” said Naboyi Maseti, another community member.

“These floods leave huge potholes on the village’s gravel roads,” she adds.

Lindokuhle Vellem is an advocacy analyst and public sector accountability officer based in the Eastern Cape. He says the communities should have a clear understanding of what the district office’s plans are in the event of a disaster.

“We attended a meeting with disaster managers, and they said they could rely on social development for social support. The main problem is also changing the leader. Because every leader has their own plans. We hear about catastrophe-related budgets, but we don’t know how those are used,” he adds.

According to Vellem, local government is supposed to play an essential role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

“If there is heavy rain or flooding in Adelaide, then we need to respond, we cannot be reactionary about disasters that are reoccurring,” he says, adding that communities also have a role to play and should ask relevant questions about building resilience and working with district offices.

“We cannot centre disasters around food parcels and moving people to community halls only; there needs to be better planning from the communities, municipality, and district office,” he says.

Dr Sarah Roffe is a climate researcher with the Agricultural Research Council. Speaking to RACR, Roffe explains that a large body of evidence shows that South Africa’s climate has undergone notable changes.

“Because of South Africa’s location in the subtropics, the country has quite a complex climatology, for example, the south-western Cape region receives most of its rainfall during winter months, while much of the remainder of South Africa receives the majority of its rainfall during summer months,” she tells RACR.

Roffe indicates that this makes it difficult to summarise how the country’s weather patterns have changed.

“Unsurprisingly, temperatures have increased, with these increases being typically higher over the central plateau regions of the country. Overall, temperature trends are uniform in direction (i.e. increasing), but the magnitude differs,” she says.