Climate disasters: Time to return to basics

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.

What was needed was an immediate, clear relocation plan using land already identified by the Department of Human Settlements.

As part of our week-long oversight visit, the joint parliamentary delegation, comprising members of both the Portfolio Committee and the Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, met with municipal officials, provincial authorities, traditional leaders and residents to assess recovery plans, mitigation strategies and timelines for restoring the damage.

However, it was in witnessing the devastation first-hand that we noted the systemic underinvestment in essential infrastructure, weak land-use planning and insufficient collaboration with communities and traditional leadership. 

It was clear that disaster management cannot remain reactive. We must anticipate, prevent and mitigate.

But how do we do this? The joint delegation believes the path forward will require a return to fundamentals – to the basics. 

What we observed is not isolated technical anomalies but symptoms of years-long inadequate planning and deferred maintenance of public infrastructure. 

In the Portfolio Committee on COGTA, we have been vocal in our concerns about underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance. 

When municipal infrastructure is not maintained regularly, even predictable rainfall events can escalate into humanitarian crises, resulting in many lives lost. 

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

Such preventative maintenance will go a long way in reducing long-term costs and safeguarding lives and lessen dependence on disaster grant funding.

We learned valuable lessons in Limpopo and Mpumalanga. When basics, such as maintaining municipal infrastructure, are neglected, the impact of climate-related disasters on our communities is exacerbated.

This means that when stormwater drains are blocked or poorly maintained, they cannot handle large volumes of rainfall. 

 When we take shortcuts in terms of costs and technical expertise when building bridges or culverts, they are more likely to succumb under the pressure of climate-related weather events. 

Similarly, roads that have not been properly maintained and upgraded will deteriorate faster, while already strained water and sanitation systems are more likely to collapse amid these weather events. 

It is clear that the extreme weather events we are experiencing will overwhelm outdated, poorly maintained infrastructure, compounding the scale of flooding and damage.

These are not unpredictable failures. They are foreseeable consequences of deferred maintenance and insufficient investment in basic municipal infrastructure.

In several provinces, flooding has become a recurring pattern. This underscores one of the delegation’s most pressing concerns identified during the oversight – weaknesses in land-use management and municipal spatial planning. 

Building settlements in floodplains continues to put communities at risk, often with devastating consequences. 

Preventing this will require better planning and more importantly, enforceable by-laws that hold local authorities accountable for authorising development in flood-prone areas. 

Significant loss of life, property damage and escalating government expenditure could be avoided if municipalities rigorously enforce restrictions against building in high-risk areas and where necessary, facilitate timely relocation.

For this, local authorities will have to undertake comprehensive floodplain mapping, among other things.

These planning processes must include flood risk assessments, climate projections and importantly, be based on scientific evidence. 

All this must also be done with community involvement by integrating the views of traditional leadership structures and residents who often have valuable insights into historical flood patterns and the vulnerabilities of their communities. 

Their participation will ensure that land-use planning and settlement efforts are more sustainable.

In addition, there must also be accountability measures to ensure that compliance with planning regulations and infrastructure standards is not treated as optional guidance but as enforceable obligations.

Collaboration across all spheres of government, supported by technical expertise and sustained engagement with communities and traditional leaders, is indispensable to breaking the cycle of avoidable disaster exposure.

The oversight visit emphasised the need for a coordinated and proactive approach to disaster risk reduction in all our municipalities.

Municipalities, provincial authorities and national departments must align their efforts to ensure that preparedness measures are not implemented in silos. 

What is needed is to link early warning systems to practical interventions and to ensure seasonal risk assessments inform maintenance and infrastructure inspections. 

It is absolutely critical that disaster preparedness at the local level becomes routine rather than reactive.

The latest devastation in Limpopo and Mpumalanga should serve as a turning point. 

Climate-related weather events may intensify but governance ultimately determines how vulnerable our communities are. 

If municipalities recommit to routine maintenance, invest in resilient infrastructure, enforce spatial planning regulations and collaborate meaningfully with communities and traditional leadership, the impact of future disasters can be significantly reduced. 

However, if we continue to neglect these basics, communities will reel from the social and economic consequences long after the floodwaters recede.

Returning to the basics of municipal infrastructure management is not a rhetorical appeal but a practical necessity. 

The lesson from these oversight visits is clear: prevention is more effective and more affordable than repeated restoration. 

The time to act on this lesson is now.

Dr Zweli Mkhize is the chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on COGTA