Durban - Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma will, on Monday, outline what President Cyril Ramaphosa’s declaration of a national state of disaster means for ordinary South Africans burdened by rolling blackouts.
During his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday, Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster over the country’s electricity and energy crisis, a move that has been criticised by various sectors, including political parties and civil society.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said a national state of disaster under the guise of dealing with the load shedding crisis would empower the ANC to abuse procurement processes and issue nonsensical regulations that have nothing to do with the electricity crisis.
Steenhuisen said his party would not allow the ANC to abuse the electricity disaster it created to loot and further abuse the people of South Africa.
“Instead of punishing the people with a sweeping disaster declaration for the damage wrought by decades of ANC corruption and cadre deployment at Eskom, the DA has consistently called for urgent and focused interventions in the energy sector,” Steenhuisen said.
The party is already in the process of challenging the constitutionality of Section 27 of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) and has vowed to write to the Judge President of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) for an urgent court date to hear this challenge.
Connie Mulder, head of the Solidarity Research Institute, said that under a state of disaster, citizens would again be exposed to the abuse of power by a minister or a command council without those parties being held accountable.
Mulder said a state of disaster granted abnormal powers for abnormal circumstances to the government, and that a government dare not have such powers for a day longer than is necessary. “It should be remembered that those powers the government now wants to procure for itself are the very same powers used during a previous state of disaster to decide which shoes could be worn, and they were the powers invoked to rule that hot food could not be sold.
“It was also during this abnormal state of the exercise of power that billions of rands’ worth of Covid-19 money was looted,” Mulder said. Ramaphosa’s announcement of the appointment of a minister of electricity, meanwhile, has also raised questions.
The South African Institute of Civil Engineering said it was deeply concerned the addition of yet another minister tasked with looking after energy would overlap with and possibly confuse the established roles of Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe and Pravin Gordhan, the Minister of Public Enterprises.
However, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the plan to appoint a minister of electricity was welcomed by the party as it was not a total departure from what they wanted to achieve with the transfer of Eskom to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.
“This minister will be given a mandate and it will be further refined so that he is not handicapped by intolerant territorial bullies in the system, who will want to say ‘no this is my territory, don’t come close’. “The president will resolve those issues. The minister of electricity will sleep at Eskom, eat (at) Eskom, wake up at Eskom and brief the country,” said Mbalula.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE