A Grahamstown couple had a lucky escape when they opted to spend last Thursday with family. Nomhle Frans (66) and her partner Themba Skade (63) left their home in Phola Park in north-east Grahamstown on Thursday afternoon to visit family in Zolani, on the other side of the valley.
A Grahamstown couple had a lucky escape when they opted to spend last Thursday with family. Nomhle Frans (66) and her partner Themba Skade (63) left their home in Phola Park in north-east Grahamstown on Thursday afternoon to visit family in Zolani, on the other side of the valley.
Chairperson of the Phola Park residents’ committee, Zandisile Maqundulu, said the couple were very lucky to be away from home after last week’s severe weather struck Grahamstown and other parts of the Eastern Cape.
Pointing to the couple’s bed underneath a heavy stack of corrugated iron sheeting, he said it could have severely injured, if not killed them.
“If they were in there on Thursday we would be talking very differently,” said one of the neighbours who had gathered to commiserate with the couple and help them sort through their belongings this week.
Maqundulu said that, weakened by the rain and strong winds on Thursday, part of Frans and Skade’s wattle and daub home had begun to collapse around 4.30pm.
“It was 10am on Friday when the whole house just fell,” said the neighbour.
When the couple returned to the area on Saturday, they were horrified to find the house entirely collapsed on top of their belongings.
Maqundulu said they’d missed out on the relief provided by Makana Municipality’s disaster relief unit.
He said the municipality had issued 17 matresses and 30 blankets for residents in Phola Park, and the formal suburb of Hooggenoeg to its west.
“But they got nothing,” Maqundulu said.
However, ward committee member Beulah Douglas, who helped co-ordinate relief efforts following Thursday’s cold and chaos, said blankets and mattresses had been distributed from the Hooggenoeg Hall that same night, to people who urgently needed them.
“We gave to people who needed help there and then,” Douglas told Grocott’s Mail.
“We did it as the events happened.”
She said Frans had come asking for blankets and a mattress two days after other residents had been to collect theirs.
She also said that Frans had accused her of unfairly distributing the goods.
She strongly denied this and said everything had been handed out to those who needed it.
“We took photos of the residents who received the goods, and got them to sign,” Douglas said.
Fortunately, by early this week, help was at hand for Frans and Skade.
When Grocott’s Mail called Makana Municipality’s disaster unit manager, Khuselo Qupe, on Tuesday 9 June, he said they were aware of the couple’s plight and had identified a prefabricated structure for them, previously used by the provincial roads maintenance department.
“The only thing is, it’s in Zolani,” Qupe said.
“To save us the expense of moving it, we asked the couple if they wouldn’t mind moving across the valley to Zolani.
“They said they had no problem with that.”
Last Thursday, snow fell in the Winterberg north of Grahamstown, as well as the southern Drakensberg.
Winds of up to 48 metres a second were reported in the Highlands area, where the Waainek wind farm is being constructed.
Huge swells were experienced along the coast and, in the Grahamstown area, overnight rains of up to 50mm were reported on Thursday 4 June.
Strong winds left Hooggenoeg resident Rosie Swart with a gaping hole across the south side of her house after an entire wall collapsed.
When Grocott’s Mail visited her on Thursday 4 June, a bitterly cold wind howled through the rooms of the 9th Avenue house which she shares with her children and grandchildren.
The corrugated iron roofing sheets blew loose, leaving the bathroom and kitchen on the house’s south side without any protection from the driving rain.
That, combined with gale-force winds, blew over an entire wall.
When Grocott’s Mail returned this week, Swart’s kitchen and bathroom remained open to the elements, but the remaining walls had been reinforced with corrugated iron sheets.
“The children helped me,” Swart said, pointing to the reinforced wall.
“They fixed the wall like this.”
Also left exposed to the elements last week were Philiswa Tetani and Michael Moli.
The Phola Park residents sent their daughter, Sinovuyo Tetani, to stay with her grandmother in Extension 10 when the roof collapsed on her bed.
When Grocott’s Mail returned this week, they were not home, and neighbours hadn’t seen them that day.
However, the roof had been repaired, with the corrugated iron roofing sheets replaced.
