Often the face of large-scale disaster, natural or otherwise, is that of poor folks who are most in need of state help. In SA, such a face is often black, after all, SA is a predominantly black African country.

But in many instances, thanks to apartheid spatial planning, the very poor, which reads black African, find themselves at the mercy of the elements when such disasters strike. And we have had a few of those over the past 18 months or so...