Widespread flooding in S. Africa spurs disaster declaration

With at least seven of S. Africa’s nine provinces experiencing ongoing flooding due to climate change and the La Niña global weather phenomenon, combining to impact millions of people, drown crops and claiming at least a dozen lives, a state of disaster has been declared across most of the country, with more warnings of heavy rains in the forecast.

Excluding the southwestern areas of the country, where intense heat and dry air have pushed temperatures well above average, most of S. Africa is enduring yet another wave of very heavy downpours, overwhelming drainage systems in developed areas and threatening summer crop yields as the seemingly ceaseless rains exceed seasonal averages, by far.

The annual average rainfall is 713 millimetres (28.1 in), which is mostly concentrated in the summer months.

In just five recent days, the hard-hit regions of S. Africa recorded torrential downpours, some parts receiving over 310mm (12 in), three times the whole country average for the month of February.

Besides ongoing dislocation for low-lying communities, rural and urban, with an estimation of affected people running into the millions, the intense rains have caused yet more infrastructural damage on top of that done by prior rounds of a similar weather pattern this summer and last.

Drownings at river crossing sites, during baptism ceremonies and due to underestimation of strong river flows, where there were only small streams or dry river beds, have all recently been reported.

Authorities are warning drivers of vehicles and pedestrians to be wary of strong-running waters, even on surfaced roads.

The South African Defence Force has established a permanent disaster reaction force, following serial extreme flooding events, the worst happening towards the end of the 2021/22 summer season.

Last April, at least 459 fatalities were recorded due to floods affecting mainly the south-eastern coastal KwaZulu-Natal province, leaving entire communities uprooted, many losing all their possession, with a further two dozen people, at least, missing and presumed drowned.

The same combination of weather events and patterns as caused that inundation is responsible for the current round of flooding, occurring in a broad band of the country running from the northwest through the southeast.

Daily warnings

In this week, the S. African Weather Service (SAWS) has daily issued high-level warnings, up to 9 on a scale ending in 10, of local and regional floods and low-lying area swamping.

The forecast is for more of the same, with no clear relent in sight and with growing concerns that 2023’s late summer weather pattern will likely to repeat what was devastatingly experienced in the same period in 2022.

Among most concerned about the mounting cost and potential damage yet to be done is the agricultural sector, with many farmers saying that if the rains do not cease, or at least allow crops and the land to dry out somewhat, there will be large-scale food crop failures.

Johan Van Den Berg, an independent agricultural meteorologist writing for Grain SA, a body representing maize, soybean, sunflower, groundnut, wheat, barley, oats and sorghum growers, summed up conditions affecting his industry with a grim prediction of likely damage, should the current weather pattern persist.

“Most of the country (has) received average to above-average rainfall since about 2020,” said Van Den Berg.

“Flooding or water-logged conditions occurred in some areas, causing damage to crops and infrastructure.

“The very wet conditions since 2020 are in contrast to the severe drought conditions over large parts of the country from about 2014 to 2019,” he added.

The prevailing weather patterns make “farming in South Africa very difficult – ranging between the extremes of severe drought or very wet conditions for consecutive seasons”, said this industry spokesperson.

“The most important factor that is responsible for these fluctuations is the so-called ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation), with the two main components of El Niño and La Niña.”

El Niño is the abnormal warming of the central Pacific Ocean surface waters, while La Niña is the cooling of this area of open ocean.

The currently-dominant La Niña element of this globally-impactful weather phenomenon is predictive of an extremely wet late summer season, climatologists and metrologists have warned.

As indicated by Grain SA’s Van Den Berg, the flooding situation in some parts of the country has been matched in intensity by very hot and dry conditions, worsening an ongoing years-long drought.

This is the case in the southwestern regions, including the Western Cape, where authorities have again warned citizens to reduce their daily water usage, as another ‘day zero’, when the taps run dry, threatens Cape Town and surrounding areas.

'State of disaster'

Already, on the fringes of the flood-affected zones, the Eastern Cape’s Mandela Bay metro is in the midst of a ‘day zero’ emergency, as local water reservoirs and dams have dried up, despite the region also having recently had some deadly flash-flood incidents in which run-off from hard-baked soil following heavy downpours has caused more damage but brought almost no relief from the long-term drought there.

Further along the Indian Ocean coast, in the areas where whole communities were literally washed away, along with much infrastructure such as roads and bridges, many victims of the historically-severe 2022 floods are still awaiting resettlement from temporary accommodation provided in the wake of the raging waters they survived.

While some of the infrastructure damage done has been repaired, many rural areas are still awaiting bridge and road reconstruction.

The declaration of a state of disaster in the flood-hit parts of S. Africa was to “enable an intensive, coordinated response to the impact of floods that are affecting Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, the Northern Cape, and North West,” said a spokesperson for the Presidency.

“In agriculture, farmers have suffered crop and livestock losses, and anticipate further losses as the South African Weather Service predicts that current heavy rains will persist,” the Presidential spokesperson said, adding that the heavy rains and accompanying floods were expected to persist for the remainder of the summer season.

“Taken together, these conditions demand the provision of temporary shelters, food and blankets to homeless families and individuals, and the large-scale, costly rehabilitation of infrastructure.”