South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Monday that his cabinet had decided at a special session to declare a state of national disaster.
"Tonight we are a nation united in mourning," Ramaphosa said.
The declaration included the mobilization of 10,000 troops to the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal Province, where days on end of heavy rains have sent rivers pouring over their banks and triggered mudslides and flash floods.
Dubbed Operation Chariot, the troops will help with search and rescue efforts as well as the delivery of food, water, and clothing. They will also aid in rebuilding collapsed roads and bridges and help to restore electricity, according to AP.
The flooding has destroyed more than 4,000 homes and damaged another 13,500 while displacing more than 40,000 people. On Tuesday, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala announced the discovery of five more bodies in a Durban suburb, bringing the total death toll to 448.
“We have more than 35 that were affected, 8 in Ilembe and King Cetshwayo,” KwaZulu-Natal Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Health Nomagugu Simelane told the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on Tuesday. “We’ve got a few [damaged health facilities] inland in terms of uMgungundlovu and Inkosi Bhambatha area. The most damaged is here in eThekwini and Ugu District.”
The worst of the storms occurred on April 11, when a weather station at the Mbazwana Airfield station in northern KZN, near the border with Mozambique, recorded 8 inches of rain - five times what that location received in all of March, according to Business Insider.
Ramaphosa has blamed the freak storms on climate change, which elsewhere in Africa has been similarly blamed for unprecedented drought and famine, including in Madagascar and the Horn. Ironically, a coalition of several climate change activists and lobby groups brought a lawsuit against Ramaphosa last week, demanding his government be found guilty of “culpable homicide” for its acts of omission to “prevent further emissions and to protect the vulnerable from increased inequality and poverty.”