When severe flooding swept through Limpopo and Mpumalanga earlier this month, roads were submerged, clinics became unreachable and entire communities were cut off from basic services.
At Debrief Network, we went looking for the people who stepped in when the system could not.
In Giyani, one of the hardest hit areas, a pregnant mother, Evidence Ramuswana, went into labour in the early hours of the morning. With floodwaters cutting off access to hospitals and clinics, there was no ambulance, no midwife and no medical equipment available.
Village elder and community health worker Maggie Stokgane rushed to help.
At around 2:30am, Maggie assisted with the delivery of the baby inside a flooded community with no gloves and no tools. With shops closed and no equipment to safely cut the umbilical cord, the placenta was left attached until morning.
Maggie works as a community health worker but was never able to pursue nursing after not completing her primary education. She told us that clinics and community healthcare centres in the area are heavily under-resourced, a reality she confronts daily while assisting patients living with HIV, TB and other illnesses, often without basic protective equipment.
The floods have since subsided. But the conditions that placed Maggie in that moment have not.
This is not an isolated story. Across flood-affected areas, neighbours became first responders, stepping into roles usually filled by clinics, emergency services and social workers. In Hoedspruit, for example, local community groups and Hoedspruit Farm Watch coordinated to make sure no one was left stranded. Homes, farms and the main roads connecting the town to other areas were damaged, but residents came together to deliver food, shelter and support.
It is these quiet acts of responsibility and care that kept people alive when formal systems were unreachable.
This is why we went looking for them, because while disasters expose vulnerability, they also reveal who is holding communities together when no one else can.
Watch Maggie’s story. And ask yourself what it says about who we rely on when everything else disappears.
