KZN MEC Sipho Hlomuka revealed this month that the damage to the province’s infrastructure due to the recent floods stood at more than R25bn.

This amount has since gone up by at least R5bn and will rise further, says Dr Roland Ngam, programme manager for climate justice and socio-ecological transformation at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation SA.

He notes in the hours after the flooding, President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Durban and declared that ‘this disaster is part of climate change. It is telling us that climate change is serious. It is here.'

Later, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana declared: ‘What happened in Durban was climate change.’

In his opinion piece on the Daily Maverick site, Ngam questions whether this is the new normal for KZN.

Says Ngam: ‘There is clearly an emerging pattern of increased extreme weather events in southern Africa and the southwest Indian Ocean islands, so political and social actors have to adjust quickly to this new reality.’

He outlines a number of key priority actions which must be taken:

* The weather service needs to create a broad international partnership in order to improve its weather forecasting capability. It has to collaborate with more meteorological centres both inside and outside SA. It should also develop closer ties with media houses and local government authorities to give people information in real-time.

* National and provincial governments must enforce stricter rules for where people build. There must be monitoring to ensure people do not build on unstable hillsides or in flood-prone basins. Housing and land reform projects to ensure desperate people do not resort to building in disaster-prone areas.

* The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that we are witnessing an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. These warnings have been echoed by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation. We must view all the climate crises around the world from a holistic perspective. The world needs to work together to cap warming below 1.5°C before it gets worse.

* The KZN Government should revisit its crisis management preparedness. It should rewrite and rehearse its ‘disaster playbook’. The province has suffered four major crises in a very short time. Political and social actors in KZN and elsewhere in the sub-region should live with the assumption that the next crisis is only a few hours away.

* Durban and the rest of SA need to ‘weatherise’ homes and public infrastructure. KZN needs to review how it builds its roads and bridges and manages its drainage systems. Floodwater drainage systems must be inspected frequently to ensure they are not clogged.

Full opinion piece on the Daily Maverick site