Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning
What immediate interventions has his Department implemented as part of its Winter Response Strategy, particularly in township areas affected by flooding after prolonged rainfall?
Planning is essential to ensuring a rapid, effective, and coordinated response to major emergencies or incidents. In the Western Cape, the Department of Local Government, through the Western Cape Provincial Disaster Management Centre (WCDMC), leads the coordination of planning efforts between provincial departments and local municipalities. For the 2025 winter season, the WCDMC initiated planning activities as early as February, formally requesting municipalities to prepare and submit their winter readiness plans. These submissions were consolidated and forwarded to the National Disaster Management Centre to ensure alignment across all levels of government and strengthen overall preparedness.
Responsibility for urban flood preparedness and response rests mainly with local municipalities, including the City of Cape Town. Accordingly, municipalities have developed and implemented flood contingency plans as part of their winter readiness programmes or broader disaster management strategies. Recognising that urban flooding often affects informal settlements, municipalities prioritise immediate interventions aimed at mitigating impacts and ensuring effective responses. These interventions typically include providing sand or milling to control water flow, clearing rivers, bridges, drains, ponds, canals, and culverts to prevent blockages, supplying affected communities with materials such as plastic sheeting, pumping water from flooded areas, and coordinating humanitarian support through the Department of Social Development, SASSA, and various non-governmental organisations.
Alongside these reactive measures, municipalities implement several proactive actions to minimize the risk of flooding. These include advising informal settlement residents to dig trenches around their homes to divert rainwater, rehabilitating access roads near vulnerable areas, promoting health and hygiene to prevent disease around stagnant water, maintaining general cleanliness to avoid drain blockages, elevating toilet facilities in low-lying settlements, and conducting public education and awareness campaigns around flood risks. Municipal services also remain on standby throughout the winter season, ready to be activated in response to incidents arising from severe weather conditions.
