By Greg Ardé
Cynics will say it took a pandemic, a riot and then a flood to get the government to finally take KZN business seriously, writes Greg Ardé.
Sunday May 15, 2022 won’t go down in world history, but for a few captains of industry, the day President Cyril Ramaphosa met them in Durban was a truly auspicious day.
It wasn’t the first time the president (with a clutch of cabinet ministers in tow) has met organised business. Those meetings happen with monotonous regularity and apart from a bit of banter and bonhomme don’t seem to elicit much.
The May meeting, though, which included Premier Sihle Zikalala and a host of mayors and parastatal chiefs, saw the state respond directly to complaints that are routinely aired.
The devastating floods have shone a merciless spotlight on infrastructural weaknesses, maintenance challenges and service delivery failures. The importance of the port and Toyota in the government’s response seems critical. The flooding of container yards and the Toyota Prospecton plant followed repeated warnings from businesses located in the critical South Durban basin.
Ramaphosa’s praised the spirit of “hope and patriotism” displayed in KZN considering Covid, riots and floods in addition to the challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty.
“It is heartening to hear you say that opportunities abound and far outweigh the challenges.”
The president said KZN represented 16% of SA’s GDP and 1 500 businesses in the province were affected by the floods.
Serious challenges arising from the floods have necessitated critical rail and road repairs.
The meeting heard that the port had accepted 100 ships since April 14. Immediately after the floods there was a backlog of 8 000 containers. Access into the port via Bayhead Road had been restored and would be improved.
Piped fuel supplies to Johannesburg were being restored.
Contingency measures – especially in respect of logistics affecting the automotive and citrus sectors – were in place. Rail lines up and down the coast and inland had all been affected. On the South Coast – Sappi, which contributes R1-billion a year to the GDP of KZN – was spending R10-million a month ferrying product by road because train lines were damaged. This resulted in an additional 400 trucks on the road every week.
The Durban to Gauteng rail line has 11 major issues where embankments had collapsed and Transnet was trying to get some passage on the critical link between Ethekwini and Cato Ridge.
Ramaphosa said “a great many lessons” about future proofing for climate change had been learnt. This called for a “complete overhaul” of planning. It remains to be seen how this will be interpreted in the rebuild. The cost estimates and timelines for this vary. At the May meeting it emerged the rail repairs could be between R2-billion and R6-billion. Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu said most municipalities lose 40% of water to leakages. The lack of skills and money to repair and maintain a system that was “beyond ageing” meant the government needed help.
Moses Tembe for the KZN Growth Coalition said issues of security, transparent state spending and the challenges of factional politics compounded growth challenges; while Zikalala said trust ought to be built around a common plan with timeous implementation and accountability.
Engineering and infrastructure experts who spoke to KZN INVEST said the floods were a “wake-up call” for integrated planning.
“There is a long road ahead to fix this,” says Darrin Green, MD Africa at global trusted infrastructure consulting firm AECOM. His colleague, Timothy Hotchkiss, an engineer at AECOM’s Durban office who specialises in flood management and the design of water-related infrastructure.
“We will be involved with a lot of the repair and rebuild work, especially in terms of bulk infrastructure such as roads and water networks,” said Hotchkiss.
It was clear from the damage that properly planned areas, and areas with well-maintained indigenous vegetation, fared much better than areas where there is a lot of uncontrolled development. A lack of integrated planning in terms of electricity, water, transportation networks and stormwater drainage meant the impact of any extreme weather event was high.
Green said KZN had paid the price for years of under-planning and a lack of investment in maintenance and infrastructure.
Immediately after the floods Jeff Smithers, director of the Centre for Water Resources Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal told Associated Press that poor maintenance of Durban’s drainage systems worsened flooding in the city. Drainage systems were blocked by trash, he said.
KZN Institute of Architecture chairman Sikhumbuzo Mtembu said climate change made it difficult to predict the severity and frequency of natural disasters. But, the floods illustrated the need for the city to urgently engage with built industry professionals rather than exclude them from planning.
Two weeks after the floods the Human Settlements department publicly called on retired engineers, project managers and building inspectors to apply for six-month contracts to help with the rebuild.