Climate change disasters have a psychological toll that is ignored:

“Those living close to the river and bridges, take caution. Tropical Cyclone Freddy will hit Malawi from this evening (10 March 2023).” In the weeks before the cyclone hit, the warnings were intensified on social media and from newsrooms. Community workers from the department of disaster management affairs went into the towns and villages of the southern districts.  

I was in Zomba. I had stocked up enough for a few days — cyclones like these typically don’t last more than a day. Little did I know. Tropical Cyclone Freddy began with showers, which turned into non-stop heavy rain and very strong winds for four days. It led to a power outage and no running water for almost two weeks. 

After 24 hours of non-stop heavy rain, most of the roads were flooded. In the 48 hours that followed the continuing rainfall not only flooded roads, it buried houses, some with people in them. People lost their livestock, crops and other assets — buried by mud or simply washed away. 

Blantyre, Chikwawa, Phalombe, Mulanje, Nsanje, Thyolo and Zomba were badly affected by the cyclone. Then on 13 March, Malawi’s president declared a state of disaster in the affected areas. 

During the response, there was more shelter needed than anticipated. Churches and schools offered temporary shelter. The government, NGOs, individuals, groups and churches in and outside Malawi donated essential groceries and clothing. 

Days turned to weeks and individuals became emotionally overwhelmed, so a call for psycho-social services from counsellors went out. I was among the social workers under the Association of Social Workers in Malawi who volunteered. The counselling provided in camps could only be very brief. A counsellor would spend about 20 minutes with someone and then have to move on to the next person. Even then, not everyone who needed psycho-social services was reached. There was a budget deficit, not enough counsellors and some areas were hard to reach as they were still flooded. 

Response and recovery from the cyclone took more than a month. The cyclone hit at a time when there had been a rise in cases of cholera and high food insecurity, causing a triple crisis. The toll was 659,278 people displaced, 697 killed and more than 530 declared missing. In addition, 260,681 houses were damaged or destroyed. In total, the physical damage caused by the cyclone was valued at $ 506.7 million, and $ 347.2 million to recover. 

In 2022, the physical damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Ana was valued at $ 16 million. Although donations poured in to support survivors, there was very limited psycho-social support from social workers because they were not included in the budget or the policies and planning for such disasters.

In February 2015, the National Disaster Risk Management Policy was adopted by the government to guide disaster risk management mainstreaming in Malawi. It provided strategies that would achieve the long-term goal of reducing people’s livelihood losses. The Malawi Implementation Plan-1 (MIP-1) 2021-2030 aims to mainstream climate change in sector plans, policies and programmes from 60% to 100% by 2030. 

As a result, the department is strengthening preparedness by providing training in first aid, search and rescue and reporting on disaster risk reduction, as well as providing relief items to people and identifying land for relocation for affected districts. But both the policy and the implementation plan ignore psycho-social disaster recovery. 

Social workers are not recognised as an asset, yet they can play a critical role in all phases of disaster risk management. 

In disaster preparedness, social workers have a deep understanding of community dynamics, cultural norms and local contexts. They can conduct vulnerability assessments to identify vulnerable populations. They are best placed to work with local authorities such as village headmen and chiefs, and with residents to develop disaster preparedness plans tailored to specific needs and resources. Social workers’ engagement with communities leads to trust and cooperation. 

Social workers can also take on the role of educators. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, social workers can focus on psychological preparedness by focusing on stress management techniques and providing counselling training. 

During disaster recovery, social workers can deliver psychological first aid to individuals. This helps to stabilise emotions, reduce distress and promote adaptive coping strategies in the early stages of recovery. Group counselling sessions will support survivors experiencing psychological distress, grief, anxiety or trauma by offering empathetic listening, emotional support and providing coping strategies. Group therapy also provides opportunities for mutual support, validation and sharing of coping strategies among members of the group. 

After weeks or months of living in camps, survivors go back to rebuild in the same disaster-prone areas they evacuated from. Psycho-support can be extended with follow-ups where needed.

In December 2017, the vice-president warned residents of Soche Hill, Blantyre, to  evacuate because the area was a “man-made death trap”. He advised the city council to relocate them with immediate effect to an area in Machinjiri, Blantyre. But the residents took an injunction against this order to relocate. 

In March 2023, the vice-president cautioned the residents in Soche Hill to evacuate the disaster-prone area to prevent future calamities, such as this one. In October of the same year, the local government, unity and culture ministry said residents in flood prone areas were to be relocated to Mapanga in the Blantyre district. It allocated 300 hectares of land. 

To date, people have still not moved. But why? It could be that these areas are of significant cultural value, where the land has been passed on from one generation to the next. It could be fear of being apart from others or from other attachment assets. Social workers can facilitate culturally sensitive community-based and community-led initiatives aimed at promoting resilience, social cohesion, psychological well-being, and recovery. 

Social work’s mission is to enhance people’s well-being and help meet their basic needs, particularly the vulnerable and oppressed living in poverty. It is important for social workers to uphold their ethical responsibilities by advocating for policies and practices that can create sustainable communities, limit damage to the environment brought on by climate change and help people adapt. Social workers should collaborate with policymakers, both government and NGOs, to develop and implement risk reduction strategies that prioritise the needs of the marginalised. 

In reality, social workers only play a crisis response role during natural disasters — if there are sufficient resources. A budget needs to be allocated and we need to ensure that psycho-social perspectives are integrated from the outset of planning and response.

Southern Africa is prone to a variety of natural disasters, including cyclones, droughts, floods and occasional earthquakes whose effect is now worsened by climate change. These disasters are affecting countries already deeply under strain. Without absolving state responsibility or the responsibility of global actors to prevent and address climate change disasters, social work support before, during and after these events, empowers personal and community agency and local problem solving, which will become more and more important as the disasters start to pile up. 

By leveraging their expertise in human behaviour and social systems, social workers can significantly contribute to people’s resilience to ensure that disaster risk management is as much about restoring mental health and personal agency as it is about rebuilding infrastructure.

Tsogololathu Itaye is a lecturer for the social work programme in the Department of Sociology and Population Studies at the University of Malawi. She is a Canon Collins PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Cape Town. Her PhD explores the role of social workers in disaster risk management in Malawi, with the aim of mitigating the psychological trauma caused by natural disasters.

– The Mail & Guardian

Holomisa to stand as UDM Eastern Cape premier candidate: UDM founder appears ready to hand over control of the party

– The Mail & Guardian

SA’s teachers deserve more than criticism … here’s how we can support them:

Nomvuzo Notutela has more than 26 years of experience as a teacher at schools in the Eastern Cape. She loves her job but she says it is trying at times, especially considering the limited supply of textbooks and educational materials. 

At her current school, Lunga Primary in Mdantsane, outside East London, there is no library and few books are available. She admits, “It is hard being a teacher, especially at rural and township schools.”  

 Teachers such as Nomvuzo are often in the firing line, criticised for poor educational outcomes. But they are doing the best they can. And the situation is often worse in isolated and underprivileged areas, such as some in the Eastern Cape, where there is a well-publicised shortage of qualified teachers and many schools lack electricity and adequate toilet facilities, let alone libraries. This adds to the burden teachers already face with overcrowded classrooms and scarce resources.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many newly qualified teachers start working at schools with limited orientation or onboarding processes. With just a teaching degree, and only 15 weeks of practical experience in a classroom, they are expected to hit the ground running in the most challenging of circumstances. Many find themselves in a school with classrooms containing children from different grades or having to teach subjects for which they are not trained.  

Dealing with such situations requires different methodologies and teaching practices — which most South African teachers have not been exposed to.

Help for teachers must be targeted and practical

Resources to assist teachers in these situations are few and far between. There are, for example, a few short courses, such as the Psychological First Aid for Educators in Times of Crisis designed by the UCT Schools Development Unit to help educators deal with the disruptive effect the Covid-19 pandemic has had on teaching and learning, but mostly teachers are left to fend for themselves.

This year, the Chief Directorate of Teacher Development in the Eastern Cape, in partnership with Oxford University Press South Africa, is stepping up to try to change this. They are rolling out a practical teacher development workshop programme to upskill and fortify teachers in the province. It makes use of older, experienced teachers in peer-to-peer learning environments to share knowledge around issues such as how to make multigrade classrooms work and how to address the different needs of learners. 

The series of 125 workshops is reaching 11 500 teachers for grades one to nine and concentrates on teachers in the language and maths fields, as these are the key focus areas for the Eastern Cape Department of Education. 

In the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study report, it was revealed that 81% of grade four pupils in South Africa can’t read for meaning. These disappointing results have been largely attributed to the pandemic and the loss of teaching days, as well as the disruption caused at schools across the country.  

The next best thing to experience 

Noluvuyo Buqa, Oxford University Press’s provincial manager for the Eastern Cape, says a big benefit of this kind of development training programme is that novice teachers with minimal teaching experience gain confidence by learning real-life strategies from peers. 

“There is no college or university that will ever train you on experience. To have this intergenerational exchange of knowledge is absolute gold in terms of upskilling and developing teachers,” she says. 

A seasoned teacher has learned, often through trial and error, how best to group children in a classroom and how material can be presented so that it sticks. For instance, when it comes to improving reading and writing abilities, evidence shows that higher learner engagement with reading material directly correlates with an improvement.

This underscores the need for foundation teachers to engage children with whatever resources they have and to use different learning methodologies and techniques to get their message through. In the absence of actual books, teachers who understand this have resorted to novel solutions, such as writing their own stories to help children with reading and comprehension. 

But how are teachers supposed to know about this if it has not formed part of their training or experience? 

Workshop attendee Phathiswa Hendricks, a teacher from the Nelson Mandela Bay District in the Eastern Cape, said being introduced to different ways of teaching the curriculum has given her fresh ideas and confidence about how to engage with her learners. 

Another teacher, Zameka Gwayise, from the OR Tambo Coastal District, said that even after one workshop, she was able to use different teaching strategies for different learners. “It showed me how to deal with a system that is always changing.”

 
More motivated teachers are also better teachers 

Noluvuyo notes, “Teachers know their subjects and how to present the educational content. But they need help to navigate the diverse needs of learners, especially in situations where resources are constrained. Having more flexibility and creativity to use different methodologies as the need arises could lead to better learning outcomes.”  

While it is early days in terms of measuring the outcomes of this intervention, the improvement in teacher motivation is already a step in the right direction.

The more engaged teachers are, the more they can learn on an ongoing basis, and ultimately, it is the learners who reap the rewards. Noluvuyo believes this is one of the reasons why teacher development is important. “We can already measure our success in terms of the changes in teacher behaviour.”

The importance of empowering and upskilling our teachers in this way cannot be overstated. As South African education economist and researcher Gabrielle Wills says: “You cannot win a war unless you train your army. Our teachers are the key agents for change with respect to providing quality learning and education for children.”  

Lucia Ndabula is the national education manager at Oxford University Press South Africa. 

– The Mail & Guardian

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