At first glance it may appear that Grahamstown got off lightly in the floods of the past few weeks.In our area we haven't seen scenes that were played out in parts of Ndlambe where houses were up to their eaves in floodwater.
At first glance it may appear that Grahamstown got off lightly in the floods of the past few weeks.In our area we haven't seen scenes that were played out in parts of Ndlambe where houses were up to their eaves in floodwater.
If we delve a little further into how the floods have affected our area however, we will quickly understand that the consequences of the persistent rains have been quite devastating. Several families in the Phaphamani, Zolani and Sun City areas have completely lost their houses in the gushing streams that sprang up on the hill. Other houses, while still standing when the sun came out, were so severely damaged that they will take months of hard manual labour to repair.
As is usually the case, the poorest members of community are hit hardest. While visiting Zolani, where many unemployed people live in tin shacks held together with bits of plastic, we came across a man who was struggling to survive before the rains came and drenched his meagre store of food. Now he has no food and it is only his courage that somehow pulls him through each day. His case is not exceptional – there are many families who have been devastated by the flooding, yet somehow they survive.
The human cost of the floods has been terrible. Thousands of members of our community are suffering extreme hardship because of the rains, but through efforts of many generous residents, businesses and municipal officials, emergency food and blankets are finding their way to where they are most needed.
Makana Council has declared our municipality to be a disaster area because even though the full extent of the damage has not been assessed, Councillor Nomhle Gaga says that a conservative estimate of the cost to the municipality will be in the region of R158 million – about half the annual budget of the municipality. The most expensive items in the disaster bill are likely to be road, drainage and other infrastructural repairs.
There are difficult times ahead of us all. Some food items will not be found on the shelves, and those items that are there will probably be more expensive as transport costs are inevitably higher. Let us hope that this disaster causes residents to work together to help each other out so that when the N2 is fully operational again, houses have been repaired and all the potholes have been fixed and we can emerge from these testing times in a better state than we were when the rain-gods decided to give us a serious drenching.
