The heavy rains on the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) South Coast had subsided by Friday, allowing clean-up operations to begin.
Twelve people are known to have died in the deluge described by South African Weather Service forecaster Mark Todd as ”really extreme”.
Todd said the outlook for Friday was clear with very little cloud.
There might be some rain in the far southern and south-western regions, but not as dramatic as the more than 300mm that was recorded earlier this week.
There was a warning of isolated heavy falls of rain over the Cape Metropole, southern parts of the West Coast municipality, the Paarl winelands and western parts of the Overberg District.
Very cold and wet conditions were also expected over the high-lying ground of the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape provinces.
But, said Todd: ”There is no reason to panic” as it was unlikely to register more than 50mm over 24 hours.
Earlier, Brian Dube, spokesperson for the Ugu district municipality on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast said four people were still reported missing and damage assessments were under way.
”We were able to go out on an air force chopper to assess the damage. What we found is that most of the damage was to the road infrastructure, and about 10 bridges had been washed away,” said Dube.
”With the weather subsiding and access to roads becoming better, some of our rescue operations managed to go in and remove some of the road blockages.”
He said it was too early to put a cost to the damage.
At least a thousand people were displaced by the floods and received shelter at local police stations and community halls.
The Durban Weather Bureau said the heavy downpour had broken four rainfall records, one of them dating back to 1964. — Sapa