Nature’s lesson is obvious

THERE were probably many South Africans who felt relieved when Tropical Cyclone Idai miraculously missed the east coast, going on instead to wreak havoc in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The relief was shortlived. This week the people living along the coast in the upper reaches of the Eastern Cape and southern KwaZulu Natal all the way to Durban and beyond are counting the cost of the deluge that hit them.

Houses have been washed away, roads, infrastructure, to say nothing of the scores who have perished and the hundreds – perhaps thousands – who will have been displaced and left with nothing.

Once again, we have been powerless in the face of nature’s wrath, but not blameless. Pictures of the beaches around Durban and the harbour carpeted in plastic debris washed down by the floods – and ultimately back out to sea – are a silent testimony to the contempt in which we hold our environment.

The storms are more violent and more destructive because of how our behaviour has spurred on climate change through global warming, but much of the ensuing damage, the sinkholes in roads and the flooding are now being blamed on local municipalities which did not do their jobs properly, repairing infrastructure and ensuring drainage systems were not blocked by litter and other human detritus after the last storms.

Taken together they are a damning indictment on our commitment to meet the changes we see about us and do everything that we can to minimise future harm – and the lives and property of innocents.

We must do whatever we can within our power to clean up our environments, to actively reduce our carbon footprint not just for the generations to come, but for our own survival – and we must hold people and politicians to account, where they fail to exercise these standards of care.

We can no longer afford to put our heads in the sand – because if we do we’ll drown, literally.