by Joshua Chigodora
The theme of this year’s International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), Cities at Risk, reminds people in southern Africa and the world over of the vulnerability of cities to natural and human made disasters.
The commemoration in October helps authorities to check their preparedness against various types of disasters such as droughts, cyclones and floods.
While the majority of southern Africa’s 145 million people live in rural areas, cities and towns have always provided shelter in times of such disasters as war and floods, placing them under further risk from over-crowdedness, disease outbreaks and other related problems.
Member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are being urged to pursue programmes that are aimed at reducing risks in their cities. One such important programme is reversing the rural-urban migration. With an urban population growth rate of about 6.5 percent, disaster management experts are warning that SADC cities and towns are now vulnerable to disasters due to the population density.
“With such heavy concentrations of population in urban areas, when a disaster strikes today it affects more people than in the previous years when populations were far less, and hence the theme, Cities at Risk,” says the recently formed Disaster Management Information Project (DMIP) of the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) in Harare.
Commendable efforts have been made in SADC member states which have seen the establishment of the regional and national early warning systems that advise governments, humanitarian institutions and communities on various measures to mitigate disasters.
State organs that coordinate disaster management have been set up in all the SADC states and are collaborating with different humanitarian agencies and NGOs.
For years, emphasis was placed on relief without incorporating development, but now SADC governments are incorporating mechanisms that integrate disaster management in mainstream policies and plans for national development, poverty alleviation and environmental rehabilitation.
Efforts are being made to mitigate the impact of natural disasters through regional cooperation and appeals for international aid are being channelled through the regional grouping.
Disaster management and economic development, however, inevitably compete for resources. “They are synonymous and their resourcing should be a combined administrative process,” advises an official of Lesotho’s Disaster Management Authority, who said there is need for sharing information among SADC member states to enhance regional cooperation.
“Information on cities at risk and the type of disasters in SADC member states is not readily available. At national level, only a few countries such as South Africa and Tanzania have well-documented
Information on risky areas particularly floods,” says DMIP, a programme supported by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Despite relative peace in the region, poverty reduction, food security and basic services remain serious challenges for SADC member states.
Most states are engaged in programmes to reduce rural-urban migration through support for income generating projects in rural areas, employment creation and a rapid increase in informal sector activities in the face of a decline of basic services in the urban environment in general.
Some countries have bigger challenges than others, especially South Africa and Zambia which have more than 50 percent of their populations living in urban areas. Special programmes in Zambia have persuaded some city dwellers to opt for rural life, leaving the crowded towns and cities.
The southern African region has experienced various types of natural disasters, with the most notable ones being the droughts of 1991/92 and 1994/95 which affected over 20 million and 18 million people respectively.
Water was at critical levels in most dams and rivers, with some boreholes drying up throughout the region. Inadequate water supplies forced the introduction of water rationing in some cities. Zimbabwe suffered massive power shortages which affected mostly city dwellers. In addition to significant job losses, rural urban migration increased, placing the city’s services under immense pressure.
Cyclones, such as Domoine and Nadia, affected about 900,000 people in Mozambique alone with occasional floods also affecting towns and cities in South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho, Botswana and Tanzania.
Although most of the region had a near normal rain season in 1995/96, Namibia suffered a serious drought. A recent SADC food bulletin says the country has a cereal shortfall of 110 000 tonnes of which 81 000 tonnes is maize. With an estimated 180 000 people needing assistance in Namibia, the situation has been declared a national disaster.
In some cases, communities are forced to live in unsafe or unplanned settlements due to poverty and a lack of choices, and such settlements are common throughout the southern African region. The Klip river in Kwazulu-Natal burst its banks early this year and flooded Ladysmith, a suburb in Durban, affecting hundreds of residents.
Although relief workers handled the disaster, they were caught unprepared and the risks for another disaster still exist. South African Red Cross Director of Programmes, Mandisa Kalako- Williams, observed after a visit to the area: “The look of despair on the faces of those unfortunate human beings has left indelible memories of the horror which struck the communities.” (SARDC)
