Cape Town - Hundreds of informal settlements in Khayelitsha have been flooded following heavy downpours over the past week.
The South African Weather Service (Saws) has issued further severe weather alerts for Friday.
According to local ward councillor, Khaya Kama, “hundreds if not thousands” of families sweeping water out of their homes due to the rains.
Kama said he had visited a number of residents from Taiwan informal settlement to assess the damage caused by the rains.
“It’s a crisis, that’s the only way to describe it. It’s nothing new in the area, it’s been like this for many, many years and the only solution in my view is to upgrade the informal settlement because it’s extremely bad.
“Elderly people and young children are among those affected.
“On Tuesday I reached out to the City’s disaster management to alert them to the situation.
“The informal settlement is older than 30 years. I grew up there and every time there’s heavy rain it becomes a crisis in the area, so I can’t say people need specific assistance other than to have houses built for them because it’s painful and sad,” he said.
Kama added he had asked community leaders to register all those affected for an exact number of people in need of assistance.
The City’s Disaster Risk Management Centre spokesperson, Charlotte Powell, said: “The Disaster Risk Management Centre assessed Taiwan CT Section and Taiwan DT Section informal settlements in Khayelitsha on Tuesday.”
Powell added that the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) had been requested to provide humanitarian assistance.
Sassa did not respond to queries by deadline on Thursday.
Meanwhile, with climate change said to be affecting the intensity of rainfall, experts at the University of Pretoria (UP) have investigated the presence of observable changes in the probability of significant to extreme daily rainfall across South Africa.
UP researchers found the amount of rainfall in certain parts of South Africa has increased, or become more extreme, over the past 50 years or so.
These investigations were part of a study led by Charlotte McBride of Saws, who is a PhD candidate in UP’s Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology.
“South Africa is currently focused on flooding, as this is what is happening at the moment,” she said.
“However, during 2018 and the Day Zero debate – when Cape Town was set to run out of water – the public’s attention was focused on drought.
“South Africa has a variable climate, with droughts and floods a common feature of this variability.”
Cape Times