“Look at me, you see these clothes I have on? This is all I’m left with. This is all I could save,” Matimba Desmond Mkansi exclaims with an air of defeat.
He sits on a stoep as he joins a group of other residents waiting to collect food parcels donated by the Gift of the Givers organisation at a community centre in Mbaula, a rural, underdeveloped village near Giyani in Limpopo.
There’s an air of despair and helplessness around the property, where people, mostly women, some with babies on their backs, sit forlornly under trees, waiting.
A woman sits in the grass, her legs spread out before her and her hands balancing her body on the ground. Her posture tells a story of someone defeated, who has accepted defeat and worries about the future.
Some line up wearily as local officials verify the credentials of those affected. Police keep a close eye on proceedings. Gift of the Givers staff scramble to offload the parcels from a truck and line them up on the floor for easy distribution.
The village of about 2900 people from an estimated 705 households was among many communities ravaged by floods that swept through north-eastern South Africa and Mozambique during December and January.
In Mbaula alone, more than 40 houses were swept away. According to government reports, a total of 1 942 houses have been damaged in Limpopo, while 1 808 houses were affected in Mpumalanga.
The floods have also caused extensive damage to critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and public buildings, which the government estimates will require more than R1,7 billion to repair in Limpopo alone. At least 38 people have been reported dead in Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces.
Minister of Human Settlements Thembi Simelane said as part of the first phase of interventions, the Department of Human Settlements has started procuring Temporary Emergency Accommodation (TEA) for people currently housed in mass care and evacuation centres. She said the second phase will focus on the provision of Temporary Residential Units (TRUs).
Simelane said procurement is underway for 39 units in the Mbaula area, 73 in Bushbuckridge, five in Blouberg and 13 in Makhado.
But for now, Mkansi and fellow displaced residents are accommodated in a church in Mbaula, while others are squatting with relatives and friends around the village.
According to Statistics SA, the village has a dependency ratio of 83,6%, and none of the houses there have flush toilets connected to a sewage network, and only 1,6% have piped water.
The damage caused by the floods is likely to put residents of this impoverished area into more dire conditions.
The National Disaster Management Centre has classified the floods as a national disaster in terms of Section 23(1)(b) of the Disaster Management Act, 2002 (Act No. 57 of 2002).
Mkansi speaks animatedly when recalling how he managed to escape from the flooding on a dark, chaotic night.
“I was woken by the sound of water flowing into the house. I went outside to check what was happening, and I saw neighbours scrambling to get away,” he says.
“Some were climbing on rooftops. I went back inside, put on my clothes and ran away,” Mkansi recalls.
He had no time to rescue any of his possessions, including critical documents such as his ID and copies of his academic qualifications.
In the ensuing chaos as water raged through the area, people used their cellphones to summon help. Choppers operated by the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) eventually rushed to the area.
The SANDF said it deployed two helicopters to evacuate people stranded due to severe flooding and rising water levels in Limpopo. The SANDF said search and rescue teams from the South African Air Force’s 17 and 19 Squadrons responded to an emergency rescue activation from the Air Force Command Post.
“Some community members used a PVC pipe they had pulled from a borehole to cross the flood and drag people with a rope,” he says.
“One family was trapped inside a house, which eventually collapsed after we rescued them. We also heard that there was a woman trapped on top of a tree pleading for help.
“We realised we wouldn’t do anything as a community; this situation really needed a chopper. The woman had been swept away while carrying a baby.
“Unfortunately, the child was swept away because the woman was holding the baby with one hand and holding onto a tree branch with the other. But she could not sustain that for too long. The water was just too strong, so the baby was swept away,” he says.
Although he is a B Com Economics graduate, he is unemployed and poor. South Africa’s official unemployment rate decreased to 31.9% in the third quarter (Q3) of 2025, down 1.3 percentage points from 33.2% in Q2, with 248,000 jobs added, Stats SA reports. Despite this improvement, youth (15–24) unemployment remains severe at 58.5%.
Where Mkansi’s house once stood is now just a pile of rubble and memories.
“My house has collapsed…clothes, furniture, ID, food, everything is gone. I have nothing. I’m just left with the clothes on my body,” Mkansi says, a lump forming in his throat.
What the future holds, he doesn’t know. He is not the only one. The floods have swept away not only homes and bridges and poorly constructed roads, but dreams, futures, and hopes of hundreds of thousands of people. – news@mukurukuru.co.za
