It’s a blistering Wednesday afternoon in Mamelodi, but muddy stormwater still trickles among the houses and streets of ward 10. Blankets dry on iron gates in the Pretoria township and shoes absorb the sun’s heat on the roofs of shacks.
The russet water streams past number 251, Rose Makua’s house. Seven people live in this stuffy dark shack: Makua, her husband, her mother-in-law, her son-in-law and her three children.
This weekend, water released from a rain-swollen dam nearby seeped into the shack and rose thigh-high, soaking belongings and warping the stove and wardrobe.
The flooding is not on the same scale as those in KwaZulu-Natal, which killed 20 people earlier this month, but it is a source of misery for a poor household, nonetheless.
Makua points out a bucket filled with her family’s ruined shoes. “Now none of us has shoes to wear,” she says. A broken foam mattress is perched over the fence to dry out. “The babies were sleeping on the floor,” she explains.
Her first born is 17 years old and suffers from asthma. She has been sent to live with relatives because her condition is aggravated by living in the shack.
Makua has lived at number 251 for more than 15 years and this is the second bout of flooding she has experienced. “But this time, it was really terrible.”
8490 shacks hit
Hers is just one of 8Â 490 shacks hit by the flooding in Mamelodi as a result of heavy rains on December 19 and again in early January.
Across South Africa, in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and the North West, floods caused by heavy summer rains have caused massive damage to households and have claimed at least 32 lives.
A statement released by the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs on Wednesday said the total damage was yet to be assessed.
Information from hard-hit communities is still being coordinated by the department’s National Disaster Management Centre.
However, the statement said that up to 500 houses could have been damaged in Gauteng and that 12 people had died in the province. In KwaZulu-Natal about 200 households have been affected, 20 people have lost their lives and nine have been seriously injured.
Last week CNN reported that at least 50 people had died after floods in the Eastern Cape and hundreds more had been made homeless. And on Wednesday the Sowetan reported that four people were believed to have drowned in Limpopo and six in Mpumalanga.
Makua and other residents of Mamelodi gathered on the dirt road to collect handouts from the Gift of the Givers Foundation, which is providing food, hygiene and household detergent packages, as well as sweet packs for children, blankets, new clothing and shoes.
Back from helping out in Ladysmith and Newcastle this week, Allauddin Sayed, Gift of the Givers manager across five provinces, said that the conditions in KwaZulu-Natal were far more severe than those in Pretoria.
Bridges collapsed
“Houses were literally washed away,” he said, while bridges had collapsed, cutting communities off from the outside world, and roofs were blown off new brick homes.
Sayed said one family he had visited in Ladysmith had lost a child to pneumonia — aggravated by the wet and cold.
Ester Ramogale, the function head for disaster management in the eastern region of Tshwane, said the effect of the flooding in Mamelodi was exacerbated by the growth of informal settlements.
“The Mamelodi area is growing rapidly,” Ramogale said. “It’s mainly informal structures. [People] settle in areas where they have been advised not to build.”
Ramogale said preventative measures included the distribution of flyers containing warnings to residents about living in low-lying areas. Awareness campaigns were carried out in winter and schools, particularly, were targeted.
People tolerate such conditions, Ramogale said, because “they are waiting to be moved to RDP housing”.
Makua is bitter because, although she was given a deed for an RDP house in 2004, a councillor told her that the house does not exist. She still hopes her RDP house will materialise. “The councillor must make it happen,” she says.
The cooperative governance and traditional affairs department told the Mail & Guardian that it plays a role in various aspects of damage management by providing support to affected communities, working in cooperation with civil society bodies and providing funds for the rebuilding of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, buildings and houses.
The South African Weather Service has warned of more heavy rains and possible flooding in several provinces at the weekend.