South Africa’s insurers are stepping into the climate resilience capacity building at the municipal level, a space once dominated by government alone.
As rising rainfall intensity collides with collapsing urban infrastructure, the cost of flooding is no longer a theoretical climate risk; it is a balance-sheet reality.
In the City of Tshwane, a new partnership between Santam and local government is testing whether practical, low-cost interventions can meaningfully reduce disaster losses while improving community resilience.
In 2022 alone, floods in KwaZulu-Natal caused an estimated R25-billion in damage, according to the National Treasury, becoming South Africa’s most expensive climate disaster to date.
Insurance claims linked to severe weather have more than doubled over the past decade, signaling a structural shift rather than sporadic shocks.
At the same time, municipalities face shrinking budgets, aging drainage networks, and rapid densification, which outpaces basic maintenance.
This leads to blocked stormwater systems, localised flooding, and rising insurance claims that increasingly fall outside affordability.
Santam’s Partnership for Risk and Resilience is attempting to shift this trajectory.
Over 1 000 people trained
Launched in 2012, the programme has expanded from five municipalities to 102 nationwide, with support ranging from equipment and technology to disaster-risk education.
To date, the initiative has trained over 1 000 people in firefighting, safety and disaster management and reached more than 130 000 residents through awareness campaigns.
The latest intervention, the Stormwater Drainage Cleaning Project, targets Tshwane’s high-risk regions, including Pretoria CBD, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville, Olievenhoutbosch, and Centurion.
The goal is to clear blocked drains before the rain arrives, but the execution requires far more coordination.
Over 1 000 stormwater catchpits have already been cleared across regions 3, 4 and 6. Early indicators from December 2024 and January 2025 showed reduced flooding in areas that historically experience rapid water pooling.
The full impact will be assessed after the current rainy season, using geolocation mapping and monitoring of flood hotspots.
Unemployed youth recruited
The project cost R3.2-million, including specialised machinery, protective equipment, and project management across 16 months.
Instead of outsourcing work, the city’s Leadership and Management Academy recruited 10 unemployed youth, aligning the programme with South Africa’s growing focus on climate-linked job creation.
Participants received workplace training in stormwater maintenance, safety protocols, and spatial data collection.
For a municipality operating under budget constraints, the partnership filled a critical gap.
Tshwane provided supervisors, transport and operational support, while Santam funded resources and coordination.
This model highlights that some service delivery failures are not technical but capacity-based.
Strategic collaboration can prevent avoidable losses while reducing pressure on already stretched disaster-response systems.
The initiative was also met with community resistance in some regions. In several neighbourhoods, teams were initially blocked from cleaning drains by residents unaware of the project.
Once on-site engagement took place, cooperation followed.
Prevention a competitive strategy
The project has since expanded public awareness through local radio campaigns and educational materials to discourage using drains as waste disposal points, a recurring cause of urban flooding.
Municipalities without dedicated drainage teams could adapt the model using technical partners, TVET colleges and corporate sponsors.
Priority conditions include political will, aligned skills pipelines and reliable supervision. Continuous monitoring (not one-off cleaning) remains the determining factor for long-term resilience.
Infrastructure that was designed for historical weather patterns is no longer fit for purpose. As insurance exposure rises, prevention is becoming a competitive strategy.
The Tshwane project does not solve the systemic challenge, but it proves that targeted, practical interventions can reduce losses, build capacity, and create local opportunity.
