South Africa floods kill over 250 in Kwa-Zulu Natal

Days of super-intense downpours in South Africa's Indian Ocean Province of KwaZulu-Natal have left over 250 people dead, many missing and thousands displaced – with more heavy rain on the way and likely to last into next week.

A series of cyclones and tropical storms, which have hit the south-eastern parts of Africa, as well as Madagascar, have culminated over the last several days in record-breaking downpours across South Africa's most populace province, sweeping away bridges, roads, buildings and vehicles, isolating communities and leaving a trail of destruction.

KwaZulu-Natal regional minister for health Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu has confirmed that the widespread flooding had claimed at least 253 lives by Tuesday evening, with more bodies being recovered since.

The KwaZulu-Natal regional authorities have already determined that national government should declare a regional state of disaster, and the Treasury has told President Cyril Ramaphosa that there were funds being put aside to help respond to the mass destruction in a province well used to tropical storms – but entirely unready for the extreme weather of the last week.

Incessant and extremely heavy rainfall has been reported across the region, with numerous places reporting more rainfall in a single day than usually recorded for a month in the rainy season, which ought to be ending but which is showing only signs of intensifying over the next several days.

With rain briefly holding off early Wednesday, President Ramaphosa travelled to KwaZulu-Natal to visit affected communities and to establish an on-the-ground assessment for himself of the extent of the damage.

Speaking to overwrought parents of four children washed away along with the building they were in, and presumed dead, the obviously deeply moved President was almost left speechless by the tragic loss about which he could do little, except to express his sorrow and consolation.

He promised the grieving parents, who are very poor and cannot afford to bury four children at once, that authorities would assist them with burial costs, once their children's remains were recovered.

With major roads closed due to washouts and many landslides, plus numerous bridges rendered unusable or washed away, travel across the province has been severely hampered, much slowing disaster management responses.

With a brief lifting of the rain, aerial surveys of the affected areas showed vast swathes of damage, affecting mostly poor high-density informal settlements, but also up-market expensive suburbs of Durban and other centres.

Many open fields, school yards, even Kingsmead sports ground in Durban where a cricket test match between South Africa and Bangladesh was played, were swamped with large areas of standing water, the ground completely saturated by the seemingly ceaseless recent rains.