Police Minister Senzo Mchunu confirmed the toll while meeting teams that had spent days recovering bodies. Officials warned that more people remained missing, leaving open the possibility that the number of deaths would increase. Children were among those killed, although authorities had not provided a complete age breakdown. In one incident, a school bus was swept away; six children and three adults from the vehicle were confirmed dead, three students survived by holding onto trees, and four people remained missing as of Saturday.
The flooding hit quickly. Provincial officials said water from a river formed a surge three to four meters high in some places, carrying some victims as far as two kilometers from their homes. Residents were trapped indoors or forced onto rooftops while rescue teams later conducted searches from house to house.
Communities around Mthatha were especially exposed because many people lived in informal homes close to the river. The Eastern Cape is largely rural and includes some of South Africa's poorest areas. Reports described extensive damage to houses, roads, schools and health facilities, while mud and floodwater complicated rescue and recovery work.
Weather services had warned that the cold front would bring heavy rain and gale-force winds, but many residents were still caught unaware when water entered communities in the early morning. Authorities faced criticism over both the emergency response and the condition of local infrastructure.
Mchunu urged residents to reject social-media claims that someone had opened sluice gates at Mthatha Dam and caused the surge. He said the dam had no such gates. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who visited Mthatha, said authorities would nevertheless examine whether any problem at the dam contributed to the disaster.
Ramaphosa described the flooding as catastrophic and partly connected the extreme conditions to climate change, noting the exposure of South Africa's coastal regions to weather disasters. More than 400 people died in floods around Durban in 2022, an event that a study linked to climate change.
For Eastern Cape communities, the immediate focus remained the missing, the displaced and the recovery of essential services. The rising toll reflected an active search rather than a closed count, while the competing questions about warnings, infrastructure and the dam were matters for subsequent investigation.
