General Elections, 5 May 2019

Floods, 18 April 2019 

Numerous regions in Kwa-Zulu-Natal (KZN) Province in South Africa were affected by flooding during Easter Weekend, on 18 April 2019, with torrential rains causing buildings to collapse, burst rivers, and rip sinkholes in roads. In total, 25 cm of rain fell on Durban, the provincial capital, Durban within 48 hours – with even higher figures in the surrounding areas (de Greef 2019). Floodings were caused by a cut-off low pressure system (South African Weather Service 2019). Thousands of people were displaced and approximately 85 people died (News24 2019a). In May, the National Disaster Management Centre classified the floods as a provincial disaster (South Africa 2019).  

Impact on the electoral process 

The floods impacted KZN Province less than a month before the General election. There were 233 reported incidents of damage to election infrastructure in at least eight municipalities, this included damage to access roads as well as voting stations themselves. Voters were also left in need of temporary identity documents when losing them in the floods (News24 2019b).  

The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) requested municipalities to financially assist those who could not afford the application fee for a temporary ID certificate. Facilitating the issuing of these documents fell jointly to the CoGTA and the provincial Electoral Commission (IEC) (Dludla 2019).  

With voting stations damaged by the floods, including a community hall for special voting (now used as emergency accommodation for the displaced) KNZ’s IEC made alternative arrangements and set up tents (Ngatane 2019). 

KZN’s voter turnout in the general election was 66.15 per cent, as compared to 75.98 per cent in 2014 (IEC n.d.).