Severe weather has pushed the Kouga Dam into overflow, triggering evacuations along the Gamtoos River valley and placing enormous strain on water systems across the Eastern Cape and Southern Cape. What makes the situation even more extraordinary is the speed of the rise: the dam jumped from 32% capacity to 119.2% in just 24 hours, after relentless rain hammered the catchment area.
By Thursday morning, water was pouring over the spillway at a rate of 2,249 cubic metres a second, which works out to roughly 2.2-million litres every second. For residents, farmers and municipal officials on the ground, it was a grim reminder of how quickly a flood emergency can unfold when a cut-off low parks itself over the region.
In parts of the catchment, rainfall totals reportedly reached 900mm in 48 hours, a figure that borders on catastrophic in many local communities. While the heavy downpours have temporarily eased fears of a looming drought in Nelson Mandela Bay, the damage left behind across the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Garden Route is already severe.
Officials in the Kouga Municipality issued flood alerts and evacuation notices early on Thursday, warning people living along the banks of the Gamtoos River downstream of the dam to move livestock to higher ground and leave vulnerable properties. For many families and farmers, it was a race against rising water, with little time to spare.
In Patensie, one of the province’s major citrus-producing areas, entire orchards were submerged. In some places, only the tops of trees and the roofs of structures were visible above the floodwater. The sight was devastating for a district that depends heavily on agriculture, export crops and related jobs.
The flooding also cut off Paradise Beach, near Jeffreys Bay, after the only low-water bridge linking the coastal community to Aston Bay became impassable. In a region where access routes are already limited in places, the closure left residents isolated and anxious about what would happen next.
Kouga Dam overflow forces evacuations as water levels surge
Speaking on Thursday, Reinette Kolesky, chief executive of Gamtoos Water, said the latest measurement at the dam had been taken shortly after 11am, before conditions became too unsafe for staff to continue close-range readings. She said the dam was at 119.2% capacity when the water was spilling over the edge at 2,249 cumec.
Gamtoos Water operates the dam, which is the largest storage dam in the water system supplying Nelson Mandela Bay. Kolesky said the team was still tracking the run-off entering the dam, but there was no clear way to know how much more water might arrive from the saturated catchment.
Her concern was not just the volume already released, but the amount still feeding into the system. Some parts of the wider catchment had recorded up to 900mm of rain, while other areas were impossible to assess properly because signal losses knocked out a number of measuring stations.
“Our top priority is to manage the dam and monitor the flow,” she said, stressing that the utility was in constant contact with the Department of Water and Sanitation, Kouga Municipality and emergency services. She also pushed back firmly against false claims circulating on social media that the dam had cracked or broken.
According to Kolesky, the structure has a safety margin that allows for an overflow of 6,100 cumec, far above the current flow. That is an important detail, especially with panic spreading online as images of the floodwaters circulated widely throughout the day.
The scale of the emergency is even more striking when viewed against the broader Nelson Mandela Bay water system. On Wednesday morning, the combined storage across the system’s dams stood at 36.1%. By Thursday evening, all three major dams — Kouga, Churchill and Impofu — were overflowing.
At full capacity, Kouga Dam can store 125,000 megalitres, while Impofu holds up to 105,000 megalitres and Churchill around 35,000 megalitres. Sources on the ground said it was the first time in 11 years that Impofu Dam had exceeded capacity, underlining just how unusual this rainfall event has been.
Local mayor Hattingh Bornman said emergency shelters would be set up in community halls across the municipality for people forced from their homes. That warning came as farms, guest properties and tourist lodges downstream braced for further flooding.
In the Gamtoos River valley, the effects were plain to see. Farms along the Kouga, Groot and Gamtoos Rivers were among the main areas of concern, along with camp sites, hotels and resorts below the dam wall. Many landowners had already started moving vehicles, stock and equipment before the water reached them.
At the Gamtoos Ferry Hotel, owner Roy Herselman said staff had been evacuated and the business was closed while he waited for trucks to remove movable assets. He said insurance assessments were already under way, but there was little else to do except monitor the water and hope the worst passed quickly.
His neighbour, Pienaar Vivier, had moved furniture, clothes, electronics and other valuables to the upper floor of his holiday home. Like many property owners in low-lying parts of the valley, he was relying on higher ground and a bit of luck.
Further upstream, one farm manager described how the floodwater had swallowed grazing land stretching roughly 400 metres from the fence to the riverbank. Cattle had been moved in time, but fruit and vegetable farmers higher up the valley were expected to bear the brunt of the losses.
The destruction was not confined to Kouga. In Bitou Municipality, engineers were scrambling to repair critical infrastructure after as much as 250mm of rain fell in parts of the region, threatening water supply to Plettenberg Bay. Gerhard Otto, head of disaster management at the Garden Route District Municipality, said the Uplands Water Works on the R340 had been severely affected and remained inaccessible on Thursday afternoon.
Otto added that the Roodefontein pump station had flooded, while access to the Nature’s Valley pump station was compromised. Bitou is still under a declared drought emergency with level four water restrictions, leaving the municipality dependent on boreholes and the Plettenberg Bay desalination plant as backup options.
In Wittedrift, about 15km from Plettenberg Bay, the town was cut off for much of Thursday after the Bitou River burst its banks. Residents were left without water or electricity, though officials confirmed everyone was safe and no medical emergencies had been reported. Both schools in the area were due to remain closed on Friday.
Elsewhere, emergency crews were still dealing with difficult access and unsafe terrain. Campers at the Berg Oord campsite near Oudtshoorn could not be evacuated because of ongoing flooding, although a helicopter was on standby. The N9 between Uniondale and George had reopened by Thursday afternoon, and alternative water supply arrangements were being made after a pipeline to Uniondale was washed away.
The storm also brought tragedy. The only fatality confirmed so far was in Knysna on Wednesday, when a tree uprooted by wind and rain fell onto a vehicle, killing Lauren Fredericks, 37, a social development worker. The Western Cape Education Department said 29 schools would remain closed for a third day on Friday because of storm damage and blocked roads.
Weather officials say the cut-off low that caused the chaos has now moved offshore into the south-east Atlantic. Some showers are still expected over parts of the Garden Route, but the system has weakened and conditions are gradually stabilising. Even so, the flooding around Kouga Dam overflow and the wider region has left communities, farmers and municipal teams facing a long clean-up and a costly recovery.