South Africa doesn’t know how ready its municipalities are for the next disaster – report

By Amy Musgrave

South Africa cannot produce a complete picture of how prepared its municipalities are for disasters, with only five of the country’s nine provinces providing substantive disaster management reporting for 2024/25.

In fact, there has been a decline in reporting, with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs warning that it is unable to compile a complete national picture for the reporting cycle.

“Reporting on disaster management was markedly uneven and less complete than in the 2023/23 reporting cycle,” reads the Consolidated Annual Local Government Performance Report 2024/25, which was gazetted on Tuesday.

The five provinces that reported substantively are the Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the North West.

According to the document, the remaining four provided little or no dedicated disaster management status.

The Eastern Cape referred to disaster management only through disaster recovery grant support for its two metropolitan municipalities – Buffalo City and