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BFF-06
DRCONGO-FLOODS
In DR Congo, flood tragedy highlights perils of urban sprawl
KINSHASA, Jan 6, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The morning light showed a scene of
desolation as people in Ngaliema surveyed the wreckage of shanty homes swept
away by killer floods and landslips.
Among the 44 people who perished overnight Wednesday in Kinshasa, the
capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, were a teenager, Brunelle, her
sister Gladys, and Gladys’ baby.
Their home of makeshift yellowish clay bricks, located at the foot of a
steep slope literally dissolved after the waters struck, neighbours said.
“The emergency services came, but they arrived late, around 4:00 am,” said
a young man, Magloire, who said that he was the one who found the bodies.
The disaster was one that could have been avoided — the rainfall was
indeed torrential but not exceptional, given this city’s location in the
heart of central tropical Africa.
But mass fatalities were sadly predictable, given the triple contribution
of poverty, uncontrolled development and over-population. Homes made of
flimsy materials had been built illegally and without foundations in a place
vulnerable to floods.
“This is uncontrolled building,” said Ruffin Abedi, deputy chief of
Ngaliema district.
“The regulations have stipulated for years that people shouldn’t live
there. But people settle there anyway, because they don’t have the money to
go elsewhere.”
A Chinese company had been contracted to install drainage on a road at the
top of the slope, but the pipes were swept away by the rain, and lay among
debris at the bottom, near a sofa — the only visible sign of a home that
once stood there.
– Chaotic city –
“The solution is to move people who live in flood-prone areas to places
which are habitable,” said Roger-Nestor Lubiku, former director-general of
the Congo Geographic Institute (IGC).
Such things are easier said than done, in a city whose population size is
little more than a good guess, and which lacks an accurate land registry.
A common estimate is that the DRC capital has 10 million inhabitants,
amounting to a rough doubling over less than 20 years, and accounting for
possibly a seventh of the national population.
Between 2000 and 2005 alone, the population rose from six million to 7.5
million, according to satellite pictures.
A 2009 study in the Belgian Review of Cartography — Belgium, the former
colonial power, retains close ties with the DRC — found that 30 percent of
urban development had taken place on steep slopes with an incline of 15
percent, or more than one in seven. “These present a significant risk of
erosion,” it warned presciently.
Three-quarters of homes in Kinshasa are slums which have no access to
sanitation or electricity, Corneille Kanene, former head of UN-Habitat, said
last year. The opposition blames the problem on poor governance and the flaws
of the state.
The proximity of these slums to wealthy areas is also a shock, and a
reminder of DRC’s deep inequalities. Ngaliema’s ramshackle homes lie just a
few hundred metres (yards) from the villas of Macampagne and a couple of
kilometres (miles) from the tower blocks, embassies and mansions of Gombe.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0916 hrs