Simelane blames city for eThekwini’s flooded houses

The eThekwini municipality’s failure to enforce its bylaws against the developers of the Galleria mall for alleged illegal dumping is partly responsible for the damage caused to houses by the recent heavy rains in KwaMakhutha, south of Durban.

That is according to human settlements minister Thembi Simelane who criticised the city for “cutting corners” by issuing clearance certificates to the developers, despite the alleged illegal dumping.

“We don’t say they [developers] did illegal dumping. We say ‘as the city, we did not ensure our business partners dump at the right and appropriate space so we created this problem as government’. A tragedy has happened now but by inaction and omission, as government, we were wrong,” she said on Wednesday.

Simelane visited six families who cannot access their homes as they are almost submerged by stagnant water.

The area has a small stream nearby, which is understood to have flooded its banks during last week’s heavy rains. However, the blockage of water has been attributed to earthworks allegedly dumped during the development of the Amanzimtoti mall in 2008.

“There was a very small stream, but unfortunately there were also patterns of illegal dumping, which the city didn’t deal with appropriately, so there’s quite a lot that we need to do.”

Simelane said it was the municipality’s responsibility to ensure everything, from electricity connections, to sanitation, plumbing and even dumping, had been done appropriately and that bylaws were followed after construction was completed.

She said the city should not have issued certificates to operate as long as there was dumping in communities.

She urged the city to enforce its bylaws.

“We should not rush and cut other processes or cut corners. We might have done that years ago, and it’s catching up with us now, and they [the developers] are gone. You have given them the certificate. You can’t go back now,” she said.

“Every action has a reaction, there is a reason there are bylaws and [when] we allow others not to follow them ... you may not see that it will catch up with you eventually, but that’s where we find ourselves now, 20 years later.

“When the city did not apply its bylaws, they also did not come to rehabilitate the land because they could’ve done that as well. Yes, it’s next to a stream, but possibly we wouldn’t be in this condition.”

She said the national and provincial departments would take responsibility “on behalf of what was done right and not done right” to correct the situation for the affected families.

“The priority now is to take the families out of this situation and the conditions they find themselves in, and my team is ready to do that.”

KwaZulu-Natal human settlements MEC Max Mbili said the six affected families had about 30 people living in the houses.

“We have engaged the induna about the possibility of relocating these families to a place where they would be safe. They agreed they can allocate a space where TRUs [temporary residential units] can be planted for now while we’re looking for a permanent solution, but engagements will continue,” he said.

Simelane said previous efforts to extract water in the area had been halted because it was unsafe for the workers as the heavy rains had not subsided. She said the extraction was still an option as part of geotechnical interventions.

She commended eThekwini for its efforts in identifying places to relocate the affected flood victims.

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