On 11 April 2022, Sibongile Mkhize left her shift at a textile factory early, feeling unwell. She had no idea it would be her last normal day for a long time.
“When I was coming home from work, it was a rainy day,” she said. “But it didn’t seem like anything bad was going to happen. It was just a normal day.”
After a visit to the clinic, she arrived at her home in Umlazi’s V Section informal settlement, in the south of Durban. She made tea, took some medicine and went to bed. As she fell asleep, she could hear the rain rattling on the roof, but when you live in a corrugated iron shack, that’s normal.
Hours later, she woke up to frantic banging on her door, her neighbour yelling: “Hey, my sister, you want to die? Are you mad?”
He pulled her off the bed, and as she stood up, she realised the water had risen to the height of the mattress — up to her hips. She’d been so deeply asleep, she hadn’t even noticed the bed was soaked.
As she scrambled to pack a suitcase and gather important documents, her neighbour kept urging her out. Realising the water would be too high for her young, short roommate — a family friend — Sibongile hoisted her on to her back as her neighbour pulled her out.
Within 10 minutes, her house was covered in water.
“When the water comes, it’s like the sea – so fast and so powerful,” she said. We started running, and we were crying. If I looked across, people were running, screaming and crying with their children,” she said.
They tried to reach the nearby Metro Launch Hall, but it, too, was flooded. “We were just moving up and down the whole night because everybody was outside. Even the hall was full of water. We couldn’t go to the Mega City Mall – the water was flowing too fast, it was very dangerous
What Sibongile didn’t know at the time – and what a team of international scientists from the World Weather Attribution Group later confirmed – was that the rainfall that destroyed her home on 11 April 2022 formed part of a two-day extreme rainfall event that caused catastrophic flooding and landslides across KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Eastern Cape.
According to the scientists, this extreme rainfall over 11 and 12 April – the most intense two-day total recorded in the region – was made about twice as likely by human-caused climate change.
Using climate models and weather records, the researchers found that before the world warmed by 1.2°C, a rainfall event of that magnitude would have been expected only once every 40 years. Now, such an event is likely to happen about once every 20 years. They also found that climate change made the rainfall 4%-8% more intense than it would have been in a cooler world.
What made it worse was where the rain fell — in low-lying, poorly drained, densely populated informal settlements such as Sibongile’s.
“We as the victims are not the cause of the floods or climate change,” said Mkhize. “They’re always putting the blame on us, living in informal settlements. We must stop blaming the victims.”
“We couldn’t sleep properly, because we were having the nightmares,” she said.
The municipality eventually relocated her and others to Yellowwood Park Civic Hall, where men, women and children slept on foam mattresses with no privacy.
“Some people were drinking, some were fighting. You can’t sleep properly.”
Despite the trauma, she returned to work in borrowed clothes and safety boots, her only remaining shoes. After three months, disaster management said there was no more funding, leaving residents to rely on church and community donations, even as newborns cried from hunger.
She stayed in the hall for nine months before being moved to a flat in town, where she now lives with her three children. But the building is overcrowded, infested with bedbugs and rats, and she was allowed to bring only her clothes and pots.
“It’s very hard to rebuild what you’ve lost, I won’t lie to you,” she said.
“I’m always losing hope. The delays, the broken promises – they don’t bring back proper houses that restore our dignity.”
Sibongile was one of more than 40,000 people displaced by the April 2022 floods—the deadliest in South African history. More than 400 people died. Roads, bridges and entire communities were washed away. The storm was declared a national state of disaster.
A crisis beyond one storm
This week, the State of the Climate in Africa 2024 report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) was released, and reflected what Sibongile and thousands of others lived through; extreme weather and climate change are intensifying hunger, insecurity and displacement across Africa, affecting every facet of socioeconomic development.
“The State of the Climate in Africa report reflects the urgent and escalating realities of climate change across the continent,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “It also reveals a stark pattern of extreme weather events, with some countries grappling with exceptional flooding caused by excessive rainfall and others enduring persistent droughts and water scarcity.”
Hottest decade on record
According to the WMO, 2024 was either the warmest or second-warmest year recorded in Africa, depending on the dataset. The past decade, as a whole, has been the hottest since records began. The continent’s average surface temperature last year was 0.86°C above the 1991-2020 average, with North Africa warming the fastest – 1.28°C above the same baseline.
This temperature rise is not abstract. It is disrupting farming, labour, health, education and economies.
Impacts on agriculture and food security
The 2024 El Niño-linked drought caused a 16% drop in cereal yields across southern Africa, with Zambia and Zimbabwe hit hardest, losing 43% and 50% of crops respectively. Malawi and Mozambique also saw declines, while South Africa faced significantly below-average harvests, including a maize yield drop of about five million tons. Despite this, overall national agricultural production was generally favourable.
While South Africa’s domestic supply remained sufficient, export shortfalls forced countries such as Zambia and Malawi to import maize, causing temporary price spikes, within global norms.
Extreme weather has dealt blows to agriculture in South Africa. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Peter Johnston, a climate scientist at the University of Cape Town who specialises in agriculture and water-related activities, explained to Daily Maverick that “South African farmers have shown resilience during recent El Niño events, but the 2024/25 season has been abnormal – late rains, mid-season drought and prolonged wet conditions delayed harvests and complicated drying.”
He said, “We can’t just say, oh, it’s El Niño or La Niña anymore. Nothing seems typical now.”
Floods and cyclones
In 2024, southern Africa faced its worst drought in decades, with Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe declaring national disasters due to severe crop failures and water shortages.
Meanwhile, East Africa experienced deadly floods from March to May, displacing more than 700,000 people in countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. West and Central Africa also suffered devastating floods affecting more than four million people.
In South Africa, severe storms in June caused flooding, tornadoes and infrastructure damage along the eastern coast, particularly in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, resulting in fatalities and displacement. Since losing her home in 2022, Mkhize has been supporting her community through these recurring floods.
How can climate change cause both flooding and drought?
The simple answer is that temperatures are rising faster than they have in the geological past,” Johnston explained. “Because this heating is sudden and ongoing, we now have a more energetic atmosphere.” He compared it with “kids on a sugar high” – normally calm, but suddenly uncontrollable with excess energy.
This surge in atmospheric energy triggers several key changes:
- Increased evaporation and condensation: Higher temperatures cause more water to evaporate from oceans, lakes and soil. This moisture then condenses into clouds, fuelling heavier, more intense rainfall.
- Stronger winds and sharper pressure gradients: The differences in temperature and pressure become more pronounced, making weather systems more powerful and volatile.
- More extreme rainfall events: Johnston noted, “You may get all that rainfall in one or two days,” which can overwhelm drainage systems and cause flooding.
At the same time, droughts are becoming more severe. “A drought isn’t in isolation,” Johnston said. “It happens because of pressure systems that cause dry weather. Now, those dry-weather systems are also intensified, making droughts more severe.” This amplifies dry conditions, leading to longer, harsher droughts.
Johnston emphasised that climate change didn’t mean rain or drought everywhere, but it intensified natural wet and dry cycles. Some areas face extreme flooding, others worsening droughts – both driven by the same growing atmospheric energy.
Digital solutions and early warnings
While the challenges are immense, the WMO report notes that digital transformation is helping African countries improve weather forecasts and early warning systems.
They note that the South African Weather Service (Saws), which is a member of WMO, has also integrated AI-based forecasting tools and modern radar systems for effective and timely weather predictions.
But while these are important steps, the report stresses that much more is needed: more investment in digital infrastructure and capacity building, stronger data stewardship and sharing frameworks and improved equitable access and inclusive service.
This is reflected in the fact that many people, including Mkhize, didn’t know these floods were happening – despite Saws sending out warnings – due to internet access issues, climate literacy and communication issues.
That gap is evident in Sibongile Mkhize’s story. Although the South African Weather Service issued warnings ahead of the 2022 floods, she and many others never received them — a result of limited internet access, poor climate literacy and weak communication channels in informal settlements.
Saws confirms it has incorporated AI into the forecasting models process, in post-processing, at the output and data assimilation phase.
“AI assists in enhancing model capabilities for improved forecasts, data interpolation in areas where there’s no observation infrastructure, and enhanced resolution to assist in picking up small-scale features such as convective severe storms.
“To reach communities who might not have internet, we use radio (community, commercial and public) and work with disaster management authorities at all levels, including provincial, district and local levels,” Saws said.
