WATCH: eThekwini municipality launches relief programme to flood-affected families

Seventeen destitute families, who have been sharing a tent pitched on a Reservoir Hills football field for the past six months, were supplied with building material. 

They were among the over 1 000 people in eThekwini who were displaced after heavy downpours in April destroyed their homes.

READ: Flood warning for parts of KZN

Sandile Msomi lived at an informal settlement in Reservoir Hills before the disaster. He says life in the last couple of months has been tough. 

"For the past few months we have been living on handouts. We were receiving  food from good Samaritans coming from different places and spheres of life. We had to adjust and live like one big family - sharing the space with women and young children," he said.

READ: KZN Social Development to continue aid to flood-affected families

Zilingene Zimande who is also from Reservoir Hills is a mother to a one-and-a-half-year-old girl. She says the tent has been a hellhole. 

"You see, every time when it rained water would come inside the tent, then it would be cold to a point that we would get sick. This was affecting the little children severely. One of them had to be rushed to hospital after getting an allergic reaction to all of this," she said. 

The City says it hopes to assist more than two thousand other victims in the next three months.