KZN is failing to build houses for thousands of flood victims

A woman wading through the Mthwalume River to get back to her home in Kwaqoloqolo in March 2025. Archive photo: Joseph Bracken

• KwaZulu-Natal has experienced several devastating floods since 2019, destroying tens of thousands of homes.
• More than 4,000 people have been accommodated in temporary emergency housing at great cost.
• Meanwhile, the provincial government has failed to spend its budget to build temporary relocation units for flood victims.
• Fewer than 150 permanent houses have been built for flood victims.
• Plans to build more homes for flood victims are vague and progress is slow.

Zinhle Duma is one of tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed by floods that have hammered KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in recent years. But she is one of the few people to get a government-built brick-and-mortar house. After floods in April 2022, Duma and her four children lived in community halls, temporary emergency housing and a prefab house, before finally receiving a permanent home in August 2025.

Since 2019, floods in KZN have claimed dozens of lives and destroyed thousands of homes. Storms in April 2022, when President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of emergency, destroyed about 6,500 homes, and in June 2024 another 7,300 homes. Hundreds more homes were decimated by smaller floods and storms during this period.

Three years after the 2022 floods, thousands of families are still in emergency and temporary accommodation. The provincial government has spent at least R185-million on renting privately owned emergency accommodation for 4,000 people, according to the department.

Fewer than 2,000 temporary relocation units, mainly for victims of floods prior to April 2022, have been built. Temporary relocation units are generally prefab buildings or converted shipping containers and are not meant for permanent occupation.

Fewer than 150 permanent brick-and-mortar houses have been built for flood victims, according to government statements.

Flooding in the province is expected to become more severe and more frequent due to climate change.

In recent months, the provincial government has issued several media statements about plans to develop housing for flood victims, but questions remain.

In response to our questions, human settlements MEC spokesperson Ndabezinhle Sibiya declined to answer in writing and requested that we meet in person. He then stopped responding. We caught up with him at recent construction site visits by political leaders, but he did not answer all our questions.

Human settlements MEC Siboniso Duma (bright green top) and Premier Thami Ntuli (grey suit) walk on a site for permanent houses in the Cornubia development. Photo: Joseph Bracken.

KZN fails to spend budget

Between 2022 and 2024, the KZN human settlements department failed to spend its budget for temporary relocation units for victims of floods between 2019 and 2022.

In 2019, the department failed to spend R86-million of its R151-million allocation. In 2022/23, R360-million went unspent - the department building none of the 2,224 units it was supposed to build for flood victims. Some progress was made in 2023/24, with 1,795 units built against a reduced target of 2,174. But R264-million still went unspent that year.

In both years, the department blamed delays on the April 2022 floods, which had destroyed infrastructure.

The annual reports make no mention of a budget allocation for major floods that took place after January 2022.

Emergency Housing

The government provides three types of housing to flood victims: Transitional Emergency Accommodation (TEA), which is usually community halls or rented accommodation, from which people are meant to be relocated to Temporary Relocation Units (TRUs). Those who qualify are supposed to be allocated permanent houses.

Since 2022, more than 4,000 flood victims have been housed in TEA, said housing MEC Siboniso Duma in a statement on 12 July. Currently, the province is providing TEA for approximately 1,050 people.

The plight of people living in TEA was illustrated by scenes of hundreds of people evicted from private accommodation at the Bayside Hotel in Durban in July 2025, after the department ran out of money to continue renting the accommodation.

Only after the families were on the pavement did the department make plans to accommodate them in student accommodation in Umbilo.

The department announced in July that it had bought the Montclair Lodge from Transnet for R33-million, which has 268 rooms, and it will be renovated for “a minimum” of R40-million. This will be used for TEA for flood victims, in anticipation of heavy rains this December and January 2026.

But R24-million set aside for refurbishments planned in 2022 went unspent for years while the department was renting the lodge. Sibiya told GroundUp the money was reallocated because the department “discovered” it needed to buy the property before refurbishing it.

On the right, new permanent housing in Copesville built by the human settlements department, and on the left, temporary relocation units for flood victims. Photo: Joseph Bracken.

Temporary and permanent housing

Duma said in July that nine permanent houses – eight in Copesville and one in Illovo – had been completed for flood victims. He added that 19 homes are underway in Illovo, nine are nearing completion in Copesville, and 108 are nearing completion in Cornubia. Government contractors had faced resistance and violence from the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) campaign, he said.

Several of these homes have since been completed and handed over to flood victims.

The list of projects in Duma’s statement appears to be incomplete, but the department declined to provide us with a full list of TRUs or permanent houses, either complete or being built. Additional houses may also have been built by the national human settlements department, but the spokesperson for that department did not answer our questions.

Due to the lack of permanent housing, people have been living for years in TRUs that are themselves vulnerable to flood damage.

In Lamontville, for example, families displaced by previous disasters were living in TRUs for 13 years when floods earlier this year destroyed 40 of the units. Nearly 230 people were moved to a private TEA paid for by the government. Many still live there, awaiting permanent housing.

Thousands more houses needed

Thousands more houses need to be built, but Duma was vague in his July statement about plans to accomplish this. The department is building another 1,200 houses in Cornubia at a cost of R600-million, Duma said in another statement in August.

The houses in Cornubia will form part of a multi-billion-rand housing development launched in 2014, which has faced several setbacks and is still not completed. Flood victims are expected to receive 113 of these houses in December, and 100 double-storey TRUs will be built for 200 families.

Several pieces of state-owned land have been rezoned for building nearly 4,500 houses. There is also land donated by traditional leaders, said Duma.

Flood victims outside the Bayside Hotel after being evicted in July 2025. Archive photo: Tsoanelo Sefoloko.

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