South Africa’s best-run province is in serious financial trouble after R9 billion hit

Recent flooding in South Africa’s Western Cape province, which includes the tourist hub of Cape Town, caused more than R9 billion of damage, a total that’s expected to rise once final assessments are completed. 

“Our infrastructure budget for this year is R10 billion, and the cost of the storm damage means that the whole provincial budget will have to be re-prioritised,” Deidré Baartman, the region’s finance minister, told reporters in Cape Town on Thursday.

Torrential rains that lashed the province last month inundated a number of informal settlements, and at least 12 people lost their lives.

At least 231,000 people were directly impacted by the inclement weather, and some 3,690 required temporary shelter, according to the provincial disaster management agency.

The Western Cape government will approach the national cabinet to free up at least 100 million rand in disaster funding that can be used to repair infrastructure, according to Premier Alan Winde.

“Never before have we had such a cost caused by storm damage,” he said.

South Africa is facing increasingly intense and frequent storms as climate change amplifies extreme weather, raising the risk of flooding, infrastructure damage and economic disruption.

Earlier this year, the Kruger National Park in the northeast of the country was forced to shut after the worst flooding since at least 2000 inundated large parts of the wildlife reserve.