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By Linda Givetash<\/p>\n
Wielding shovels, mallets and machetes, they worked for four hours to try to shift the muddy debris, hoping that vehicles could at last get through.<\/p>\n
In vain: A pick-up truck, stuck on the wrong side of the gigantic mound, was still unable to pass.<\/p>\n
Inhabitants of KwaNdengezi, a township west of Durban, have been almost literally marooned since a record storm pounded South Africa’s east coast, killing nearly 450 people.<\/p>\n
Like people stranded on a desert island watching ships sail tantalisingly by, they have stood as water tankers drive by in the distance.<\/p>\n
None of the tankers comes to their aid.<\/p>\n To the bitter residents, it is a sign of an isolation that has now lasted more than a week – even of abandonment.<\/p>\n “You just feel like you’re thrown away, like they don’t care about us,” said Bryson Khumalo, 24.<\/p>\n He was compiling a list of residents with the greatest needs \u2014 those whose homes had been washed away or rendered uninhabitable \u2014 to provide to government authorities.<\/p>\n No-one had yet come to check on the community, he said.<\/p>\n “We’re doing it on our own. That makes us more angry,” he said.<\/p>\n The country has declared a national state of disaster after record rains flooded swathes of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces.<\/p>\n The defence force announced Monday that it was deploying 10 000 troops to help clear debris, rebuild fallen bridges, provide clean water and reconnect severed power lines.<\/p>\n But in KwaNdengezi on Wednesday, no help came as more than a half dozen men struggled to clear a mud-covered road.<\/p>\n Many local people said they remained deeply nervous, still scarred by the sight of roads that became rivers and bore away lives, homes and possessions.<\/p>\n The floods are the worst in living memory, and experts say climate change has played a part in their intensity.<\/p>\n “I’m shaking, as you can see. I’m not angry, I’m worried,” said Ntombi Mkhize, 42, a mother of three whose youngest child is just two months old.<\/p>\n “Even if there is a small rain, because of that memory, we feel it is big,” she said, adding the fear had caused her many sleepless nights.<\/p>\n On top of that, she is afraid of break-ins and other crimes by people taking advantage of the unlit nights.<\/p>\n Lacking water or electricity, Mkhize said she had\u00a0been sending her eldest son to collect water leaking from broken pipes far from their home.<\/p>\n She had had to collect wood \u2014 still damp from the rain \u2014 to build a fire and boil the water, hoping to kill any contaminants.<\/p>\n Many local people said they were consumed by the need to recover bodies of loved-ones, to give them proper funerals and provide closure.<\/p>\n Ntokozo Magcaba, 40, had her eyes fixed on a river where police divers and a canine unit were searching the waters for her missing 23-year-old son.<\/p>\n “They say we must keep looking,” she said police had told her when she called for help a week ago. Since then, her husband and neighbours had been searching daily.<\/p>\n Rescuers followed the river for over an hour to where it intersected with a larger waterway.<\/p>\n There was no sign of Magcaba’s son.<\/p>\n “I’m broken,” she said.<\/p>\n By Linda Givetash Wielding shovels, mallets and machetes, they worked for four hours to try to shift the muddy debris, hoping that vehicles could at last get through. In vain: A pick-up truck, stuck on the wrong side of the gigantic mound, was still unable to pass. Inhabitants of KwaNdengezi, a township west of Durban, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11955,6344,3963,1397,5813],"class_list":["post-75658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-despair","tag-flood","tag-kzn","tag-struggle","tag-victims"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/669b0cfe-81f8-56a5-b2e9-4aca02183da7.jpg\")
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