South Africa is facing a landmark legal battle as two major insurers sue government entities over catastrophic flooding in 2022, in cases that could reshape the way responsibility for climate-related disasters is allocated.
The April 2022 floods in KwaZulu-Natal province – the worst natural disaster in the region for more than a century – left 544 people dead, displaced tens of thousands and caused billions of rand in damage across Durban’s industrial heartland. Toyota’s giant factory was forced to close for three months, scrapping thousands of vehicles and putting 7,500 employees on partial pay.
Now, insurers who shouldered the payouts are seeking to recover their losses in South Africa’s courts.
Tokio Marine and Nichido Fire Insurance, which covered Toyota South Africa Motors, has launched a claim of R6.5 billion (about AU$539 million) against the eThekwini Municipality, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport and the state-owned logistics operator Transnet.
A second case, filed in August 2025, was brought by the insurers of Corruseal Properties and Corruseal Corrugated KZN. Their claim seeks R540 million (about AU$44.8 million) in damages from the same defendants after packaging plants were inundated.
Both actions allege that state authorities failed to maintain stormwater infrastructure, with the result that foreseeable flooding became a catastrophe.
The lawsuits are not framed as claims against governments for causing climate change. Instead, they focus on negligence: that drainage canals and flood defences were left in disrepair despite the rising risk of severe weather.
What distinguishes these cases is the use of climate attribution science. Studies found that the rainfall during the Durban disaster was between 40% and 107% heavier than it would have been without human-induced global warming. The claimants argue that such risks were foreseeable and that government agencies should have prepared infrastructure accordingly.
The courts will now grapple with a fraught question: how far does a government’s duty extend when extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe? Must drainage systems be built to withstand one-in-50-year floods, or something far rarer in a changing climate?
Insurers face formidable procedural and substantive challenges. South African law requires written notice within six months before suing a state body, a rule that has derailed earlier flood cases. Plaintiffs must also prove which branch of government had responsibility for the failed infrastructure.
To succeed, the insurers must demonstrate not just damage, but wrongful and negligent conduct – that state authorities knew, or should have known, that failure to maintain stormwater systems would cause catastrophic losses, and that they failed to take reasonable preventative steps.
While the Durban claims seek compensation, many high-profile climate lawsuits elsewhere aim to force governments into policy change. In the Netherlands, the Urgenda case required the state to adopt stronger emissions targets. In the United States, youth plaintiffs in Held v Montana convinced a court that fossil fuel approvals violated constitutional rights to a healthy environment.
The South African litigation, by contrast, is about money – and about whether insurers can shift part of the cost of climate-fuelled disasters back onto the public sector when infrastructure is allowed to fail.
For insurers, the cases are about more than recouping losses. They represent an attempt to push governments to invest more seriously in adaptation and infrastructure resilience. If successful, they could encourage similar actions in other jurisdictions facing rising catastrophe claims.
But there are risks. The very entities being sued are those responsible for maintaining defences. If they are saddled with multi-billion-rand damages, they may have fewer resources to prevent the next disaster.
The outcome of these lawsuits will be watched closely, both in South Africa and internationally. They ask a blunt but urgent question: as climate extremes intensify, who should pay the price?
