When Evance Banda, 24, quit school, he learned carpentry and installed a workbench at home for a living.
Today, the carpenter’s bench is the solitary thing standing in a homestead ripped from its foundations by Cyclone Freddy on the steep slopes of Soche Hill in Blantyre in March 2023.
“Nature was furious. After three days of relentless rains, I heard flash floods and landslides roaring uphill where they uprooted huge rocks that battered homes, killing about a hundred people, including my mother, two siblings and nine others in the four neighbouring houses,” he says.
Flashbacks of the world’s longest-running cyclone echo across the informal settlement where massive rocks teeter precariously on the battered slopes, threatening further destruction downhill.
Living dangerously
Furrowed trails of destruction—one on the western slope that descends into Manja Township and another on the southern escarpment facing Chilobwe—tattoo the hill.
The scarred slopes have immortalised a tragedy that eluded watchful eyes and computer geeks at the weather department, which farmed early warnings weeks before the cyclone.
“We were taken unawares by the devastating mudslides that occurred in Blantyre, Phalombe, Chiradzulu and Mulanje because it was a new phenomenon. Until then, heavy rainfall was mostly associated with a heightened risk of flooding in prone districts,” says Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services director Lucy Mtilatila.
Today, Banda shudders to return to the “rocks waiting to crush the remnants” who have returned to the rubble.
Soche Hill was hit the hardest when the cyclone displaced 61 000 people in Blantyre City, leaving 212 confirmed dead and 75 missing.
“I feel lucky to be alive, but life is no longer the same. Every time I come here, I weep for my mother, my sister, my brother, my neighbours who were buried in rubble. I also weep for those who returned to rebuild. The hill I called home is no longer safe.”
The Geological Survey Department confirms that the growing community in shadow of rocks in Soche Hill is living dangerously.
After the cyclone, Dr Annock Chiwona led rock scientists’ assessments in Soche Hill, Bokosi Village at the foot of Michesi Hill in Phalombe and Ntauchira in Chiradzulu.
He states: “We mapped the boulders left in the steep slopes and concluded the entire area is risky.
“The rocks, including the big one at the top where the mudslide begun, are hanging perilously. Any shaking, it will roll down the slopes, crushing people in their homes.”
The chilling effect of the cyclone were among the talking points at a conference by the Malawi Resilience and Disaster Risk Management project, funded by the World Bank.
The geochemical scientist warned: “This is a time bomb. Any shaking, the rocks hanging on a small chunk of soil will crumble.
“Landslides have a tendency to repeat themselves and we may have a worse catastrophe if we have another cyclone or heavy rainfall.”
His department has warned against reoccupation of the fragile slopes since 2003 when similar assessments showed Soche Hill was prone to mudslides.
Since then, the protected forest on the hillside has given way to an illegal settlement.
The encroachers claim to have been pushed out of town by population pressure as only the well-off and corrupt few can afford safe zones in the commercial city.
But Chiwona warns: “The rocks need to be stabilised. The other option would be blasting, but it’s costly and likely to make the fragile area more unstable.
“For sustainability, we recommended nature-based solutions, which require experts to go back to the locals to understand which plants grew where and replant them to restore the degraded landscape. This doesn’t come cheap, but we can reclaim the battered hills if we go back to basics and listen hard to appreciate what made the hill withstand extreme weather events for time immemorial.”
State agencies’ role
During the National Disaster Risk Management talks, Blantyre City Council director of town planning and estate services Costly Chanza said it is ironic that over half of the houses in the prohibited area have electricity and water connections.
“Government structures that are supposed to be in the forefront aren’t doing their role. This attracts the people to settle in disaster-prone areas, where village heads, who were relegated to the peripherals of the city, create parallel structures to the councils,” he said.
The city planner asks government ministries, departments and agencies to “pull in the same direction” to lessen the frequency and severity of disasters.
He stated: “As public institutions, we need to pool our efforts and resources to reduce disasters. If people are not attracted to live in the mountain, the problem is almost solved.”
