Flood damage: An act of God or governance failure?

Mail & Guardian

3 days ago

Car pool: When Toyota's vehicle assembly plant in Durban flooded in 2022, the car maker's insurer took the municipality to court. Photo: File
Everyone remembers April 2022, when torrential rains pummelled KwaZulu-Natal and flood­waters ravaged homes, roads and factories. Lives were lost, families were displaced and infrastructure was destroyed. And although every part of the province bore the weight of that disaster, one story in particular has found its way into court.
Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM), has a vehicle assembly plant situated in Prospecton, Durban. It had to shut down operations after the factory was submerged during the flooding. The production lines came to a grinding halt. Pictures circulated on social media of thousands of brand-new vehicles drowning at the plant. They were written off before they even had a chance to hit the showroom floor. The damage was extensive, costs were astronomical and timelines for recovery, like so many things in this country, were uncertain.
TSAM's insurer has now taken the matter to court, not against Toyota, but against eThekwini metropolitan municipality. The company said in court papers that the flooding and subsequent damages were exacerbated by the city's failure to maintain a key piece of public infrastructure: the Umlaas Canal. The canal was built decades ago to divert the uMlazi River around the industrial zone of Prospecton.
According to court papers, the insurer contends that the canal, which is owned by Transnet but managed and maintained in conjunction with the department of transport and eThekwini municipality, had deteriorated to the point of failure.
They argue that its structural integrity was so compromised that it could not handle the sheer volume of stormwater during the April floods. And that had the infrastructure been properly maintained, the damage would have been far less severe.
Now, whether you agree with that line of reasoning or not, it raises a much bigger question that we should all be asking: when infrastructure fails and the consequences are devastating, who is responsible?
Here in South Africa, we are immune to poor service delivery. We normalise the dysfunction of paying for taxes but not receiving adequate, standard services in exchange.
The idea of infrastructure collapse has become so familiar that it's practically baked into our national psyche. Potholes are the size of bathtubs (some literally with trees growing in them). Water leaks persist for weeks and remain unrepaired, despite numerous community complaints made through official channels. Substations that blow up have not been maintained for decades.
We shake our heads, mutter something about service delivery, and move on. Until something big breaks and suddenly, it's not just about inconvenience anymore. It's about livelihoods. It's about public safety. It's about people losing their jobs, assets and sometimes even their lives.
So when a flood rolls through Durban and knocks out one of the biggest vehicle assembly plants in the southern hemisphere, we have to ask, was it really just an 'act of God'? Or was it a long-ignored systems failure, the kind that we have come to expect and accept?
One of my followers offered an informed perspective that deserves space in this conversation and brings some balance to the argument.
According to him, and a report by Aecom (Toyota's engineers), eThekwini hasn't been idle. Since the 2017 floods, it has reportedly worked with Toyota to implement several mitigation measures: installing a new outfall at Clark Road, upgrading the Prospecton Road canal and developing an attenuation facility upstream. Toyota has also enhanced its internal stormwater systems, all with the aim of managing flood risks well beyond standard design thresholds.
Aecom estimates the 2022 flood was a one-in-200-year event, significantly more severe than the historic 1987 flood. If that's accurate, then perhaps this wasn't purely a failure of infrastructure maintenance, but rather a climate event that overwhelmed even above-standard defences.
The same reader raised another important point: litigation might do more harm than good. The Dutch report on damages in the Prospecton area put the figure at a staggering R75 billion. In his view, that kind of crisis demands collaboration and consolidated funding, not courtrooms and high legal costs.
Litigation, he argues, divides the very stakeholders who should be working together.
Can you hold a municipality accountable for systemic failure, without undermining the partnerships that are needed to prevent future ones?
There have been numerous instances in South Africa where maintenance funds are unaccounted for, and the organisation responsible remains unaccountable. Perhaps that's why we jump to the conclusion that eThekwini has failed us.
This court case raises a real question: can a municipality be held liable for damages when its failure to maintain public infrastructure leads to a private sector loss?
And if the metro loses this case, what precedent will it set for other private businesses whose operations were affected?
I believe this will not be an easy case to prove. Municipalities will almost always argue that they don't have the funds, the personnel or the resources to do everything that needs to be done.
If you're a business, and especially if you're a business investing in fixed assets such as factories, you operate under the assumption that the state will maintain basic infrastructure. That's not a luxury. It's the bare minimum. It's part of the social contract that underpins why we pay rates and taxes. In a province that is prone to flooding, business and government should constantly be working together to prevent infrastructure failures.
This is a case worth hearing. Because if we start drawing legal lines around what constitutes negligence when it comes to public infrastructure, maybe it will shift the conversation away from vague, hand-wringing frustration and into the realm of consequences.
Here's the part that really gets to me when it comes to infrastructure failures caused by government negligence: the fact that so many people read about these kinds of things and barely flinch. It seems that the norm for South Africans is to accept what is. Not because they don't care, but because they've stopped expecting better. There is a kind of quiet resignation that has set in when it comes to local government, especially in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal, where service delivery failures have become the norm rather than the exception.
It's almost as though people have internalised the dysfunction. 'That's just how it is,' they say. 'You can't fight a metro.' So they fix things themselves. Or they wait. Or they leave. They move to metros where things work better. Cape Town. George. The Garden Route. Suddenly, a flood in Durban isn't just a disaster, it becomes part of a trend. A reason to relocate. A push factor or a final straw in a long list of reasons people and capital are fleeing underperforming municipalities.
And this is where the real long-term damage begins.
When people leave a metro, they don't just take their frustrations with them. They take their tax contributions. Their rates. Their investments. Their businesses. Their energy. Their participation. They leave behind a shrinking municipal budget, fewer resources and a growing hole in the very capacity that was meant to fix the problem in the first place.
And on the flip side? The metros that are functioning, or at least doing a passable job, are now buckling under the pressure of inward migration. Your roads are more congested. Your schools are fuller. Your hospitals have longer queues. And your infrastructure, which might have been designed for a population of a million, is now trying to support 1.5 million or more. It's a vicious cycle. One that affects everyone, not just the people who made the move.
So although it's easy to say 'vote with your feet', we need to ask what kind of long-term structural consequences that has for our cities, our budgets and our national cohesion.
I would like to see more municipalities being challenged. I want legal precedents that remind us that governance comes with responsibility. That neglect has a cost. That service delivery isn't optional. Not just outrage on X. Not just another audit report. Real legal and financial accountability.
But more than that, I want us as citizens, residents, ratepayers and business owners to start asking better questions. To demand better answers. And to stop accepting mediocrity as the default setting for how this country is run.
Yes, things are hard, we are resilient and budgets are tight. But we need to stop accepting those excuses as explanations for why things never improve.
What happened at Toyota in Durban wasn't just a flood. It was a failure. A systems failure. And perhaps a governance failure.
It could serve as a reminder that we are not powerless. That accountability doesn't begin and end at the ballot box. That municipalities exist to serve us, not the other way around. And that if we don't start holding them to a higher standard, we will be repeating this cycle of damage, disappointment, and decay.
So the next time a pipe bursts or a streetlight stays broken for six months, don't just shrug. Ask the hard questions. Demand the repair. File the complaint. Write the letter. And, above all, stay on top of it.
Because if we don't hold our metros accountable, who will?
Ask Ash examines South Africa's property, architecture and living spaces. Continue the conversation with her on email (