Heavy storms hit North West province on Wednesday and Thursday, damaging dozens of houses and killing livestock, said the provincial department of local government and housing on Friday.
”Heavy storms hit nine villages and parts of Mafikeng for the past two days,” said the department in a statement issued early on Friday morning.
Dozens of mud houses collapsed and the roofs of others were blown away by the storms.
In Middleton B village, livestock was killed and most electricity infrastructure in the area was damaged, said the department. ”Minor damages were also reported at the RDP [Reconstruction and Development Programme] housing development project at extension 39 in Mafikeng.”
The department said the provincial disaster management centre was providing affected municipalities with salvage roof sheets and blankets to distribute to needy residents.
The Ngaka Modiri Molema district municipality was also assessing affected areas.
Contingency plans were in place in areas vulnerable to flooding. Water was pumped and channelled out of Selection Park in Delareyville after 50 households appeared at risk of flooding.
In Atamaleng, police helped the municipality rescue the possessions of 15 households whose houses had their roofs blown off.
Festival in the dark
Festival-goers at the Aardklop arts festival under way in Potchefstroom were forced to abandon afternoon shows halfway through on Thursday when the electricity went out in most of the town.
It was not immediately clear what caused the outage, but several shows were interrupted and later scrapped as performers and audiences alike waited for the power to return.
”It was only a temporary outage and we are ready to continue with the evening’s performances,” Aardklop spokesperson Andries Vrey said.
In all, 17 shows were scheduled for the afternoon but Vrey said it was not clear how many were affected,
At one of the shows of Afrikaans singer Jan Blohm, the audience held flashlights while he used an acoustic guitar to finish his show.
In Gauteng, several areas suffered power failures on Thursday as gusting winds and heavy rainfall swept through the province, Johannesburg City Power said.
”There are no major outages, but houses and businesses have been affected,” said spokesperson Louise Pieterse.
The power cuts had spread from Roodepoort to Lenasia and they were all weather related, said Pieterse. Areas affected were Charlottedale, Orange Grove, Orchards, Highlands North, Yeoville, Florida North and Florida Lake. — Sapa