When the Western Cape came to a standstill

We’re looking back at the 2023 Western Cape floods, a disaster that unfolded over just two days but left a mark that lasted far longer.

On 24 and 25 September 2023, heavy rainfall swept through the province, triggering one of the most severe weather events the region had seen in years.

The floods claimed at least 11 lives, eight of them children and adults electrocuted in flooded informal settlements, and left more than 80,000 people without electricity.

how the warning played out

The South African Weather Service issued a level 6 warning on 23 September 2023 for parts of the Garden Route District Municipality, a day before the worst of the rain arrived.

It was about as serious as warnings get, and it turned out to be exactly right, though the deadliest impact would ultimately land elsewhere in the province.

While the Garden Route braced for the initial warning, it was the greater Cape Town area that bore the heaviest human cost.

Flooding in the Driftsands settlement killed four people, and a separate incident in the Klipfontein settlement killed four children, all from electrocution after floodwater damaged electricity connections.

The remaining deaths came from people being swept away by rising water elsewhere in the province.

the wider damage across the province

Over the following days, the rain closed more than 200 roads across the Western Cape.

The Kuils River overflowed its banks, flooding Mfuleni township and forcing thousands of families to evacuate.

Property damage from the floods reached an estimated $74.5 million (roughly R1.4 billion at 2023).

why this moment still resonates

Reading back on this event now, it’s hard not to notice the parallels with the kind of weather warnings we’ve been covering just this week.

Cut-off lows and severe rain warnings aren’t rare in South Africa, but events like this are a reminder of exactly how serious they can become when conditions align the wrong way, and how unevenly the worst impacts can land.

It’s sobering to look back at a disaster like this and realise how quickly things escalated from a warning on a Saturday to widespread tragedy by Tuesday. Moments like these are exactly why we take every SAWS warning seriously here, even when the forecast still looks manageable on paper.

Do you remember where you were during the September 2023 floods?