In her book Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi
Klein introduces how conditions for shock therapy as an economic intervention
could be created to create a context within which disaster capitalism could
thrive. The mooted state of national disaster discussed by the governing
African National Congress is one such mechanism to create conditions within
which the 'shock doctrine' could predominate public policy interventions to deal
with the 'apparent state of our energy disaster'. This rendition digs in.
Shock
therapy is a group of policies intended to be implemented simultaneously to liberalise
the economy, including liberalisation of all prices, privatisation, and stabilisation
via tight monetary and fiscal policies. Naomi argues that shock therapy "centres
on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or similar) to establish
controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are too distracted
(emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response and
resist effectively". She submits that some man-made calamities, such as
the 'the manufactured energy disaster South Africa is facing', were allowed to
reach current levels to push through unpopular policies in their wake. Acute in
providing solutions is unbridled privatisation as a mission to deal with the
provision of public services. The outcome of the shock doctrine is the
introduction of disaster capitalism, which occurs when private interests descend on a particular economic sector in the
wake of major destabilising events, such as war, government upheaval, and
natural disaster, and in the case of South Africa, the compounding energy
crises.
As public policy changes to respond to the 'apparent disaster',
the (policy) shift grants private providers a considerable windfall.
Declaration of the state of national disaster shrinks the public accountability
ecosystem and introduces a near martial law context of public governance. The
state loses its strategic oversight role, as dealing with the catastrophe
becomes a preoccupation within which non-altruistic profit motives predominate privatised
public interventions. Disaster command centres will usurp established public
procurement processes under the guise of reducing response turnaround times,
abdicating the public dimension of policy, and handing over what would have
otherwise been seen as the commanding heights of a developing economic system
to non-vetted private sector interests. Whilst the conscience of society is
generally tightly guarded by civil society movements, far
too few of these movements demand transparency or challenge (disaster) capitalism,
preferring to operate comfortably within it. As this public power abdication
carelessness and cruelty, amplified through the corporate media, allows the private
sector's social welfare consciousness deficient sections to misbehave against
the poor rages, the concomitant erosion of democracy is met with barely a
whimper from the political and media establishments.
With
reduced space for public engagement on public policy in contexts of a state of
national disaster, a compromised national legislature infrastructure, a shocked
and begging for a solution to the economy and an opportunity wrecking
electricity supply disaster, proponents of the 'private-sector-is-panacea'
policy trajectory will have the upper hand. Consequently, the erosion of state-led
democracy is met with barely a whimper from the political and media
establishments. With the bulk of private capital in few hands, the risk of
economic sovereignty rises commensurate with the appetite of local or domestic
capital to take advantage of the private sector invites.
Therefore,
declaring a state of national disaster is plausible in the short-term view of energy
security traumatised society. The truism that crisis is everywhere and impacts
everyone imbued thinkers to ask more profound questions on the intent of
usurping public power at a time strategic interventions to the energy crisis
are on the nearest horizons. The inconsistencies of information on what to fix
first have been disabled. This rendition argues that the governing ANC makes decisions and takes actions before it is even known whether the information at
their disposal on the electricity supply matters is accurate. We should be wary
of the governing ANC's potential to want to limit the period in which they are
the focal point of the electricity supply woes at the expense of surrendering strategic
assets such as ESKOM. We should instead demand that the "bottom line is
the bottom line and needs to be delivered relentlessly to us as its core audiences
with precision" and that the bottom line is
'switch-on-the-lights".
Whilst
it is plausible that the governing ANC is living up to its commitments on
climate change, getting there might require taking strategic detours to sustain
what we already have. "Goal-setting, despite its many benefits, has a
troubling side. Goals become difficult to abandon, provide a handy language to
justify undesirable action, lead to unintended consequences and, under some
conditions, lead to unethical behaviour". We cannot, as a nation, obsess
over goals that do not work for us. We equally cannot put off the reality of
the present in hopes that achieving a future goal will eliminate current
problems. The state of national disaster is, to the extent that engineers that
worked at ESKOM argue it does not exist, an ill-conceived idea unless it is in
the bouquet of the shock doctrine.
WHAT THE STATE OF NATIONAL DISASTER MEANS
The executive authority
of the Republic vests in the President, who exercises it together with members
of the Cabinet. Regarding national disaster, the executive authority is defined
in the Disaster Management Act, Act 16 of 2005. The act is a mechanism to
regulate processes in conditions created by pandemics, calamities, unprecedented
crises, and natural disasters. The Act is an assigned function in the
Constitution, drawing legitimacy from it. It provides for,
an
integrated and coordinated disaster management policy that focuses on
preventing or reducing the risk of disasters, mitigating the severity of
disasters, emergency preparedness, rapid and effective response to disasters
and post-disaster recovery; the establishment of national, provincial and
municipal disaster management centers; disaster management volunteers; and
matters incidental to it.
In its amended format,
the Act, Act 16 of 2005, further provides for the South African National Defense
Force, South African Police Service and any other organs of state,
to
assist the disaster management structures; to provide for an extended reporting
system by organs of state on information regarding occurrences leading to the
declarations of disasters, expenditure on response and recovery, actions
pertaining to risk reduction and particular problems experienced in dealing
with disasters; to strengthen reporting on implementation of policy and
legislation relating to disaster risk reduction and management of allocated
funding to municipal and provincial intergovernmental forums established in
terms of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act, 2005; to strengthen the
representation of traditional leaders in national, provincial and municipal
disaster management advisory forums; to expand the contents of disaster
management plans to include the conducting of disaster risk assessments for
functional areas and the mapping of risks, regions and communities that are
vulnerable to disasters; to provide measures to reduce the risk of disaster
through adaptation to climate change and developing of early warning
mechanisms; to provide for regulations on disaster management education,
training and research matters and declaration and classification of disasters.
As a mechanism to
regulate all crisis interventions, the act assigns a broad definition of a
disaster not only to mean sudden occurrence which causes disease and disruption
of a community but to articulate its magnitude in respect of how it exceeds the
ability of the affected to cope with its effects. It allocates the
responsibility to intervene in a continuous, integrated and multi-sectoral, as
well as establish a multi-disciplinary process of planning and implementing
measures aimed at preventing or reducing risks, mitigating severity, providing
for emergency preparedness, and post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation.
Given that the ANC, in its wisdom, characterised the electricity supply problem
by ESKOM, and thus ESKOM, as a ‘national crisis, energy insecurity is
effectively characterised as being unprecedented and possessing an ‘ANC-seen’ unique
newness, its demand on the Disaster Management Act, as amended, procures for a
mechanism that integrates the emergency character of the crisis with the
exigencies of a disaster.
Consequently, President
Ramaphosa will then opt for the Disaster Management Act as an enabling
legislative framework to regulate and guide the ESKOM crisis response, which
might be a sheer vote of no confidence in the ability of the National Executive
in its current configuration to solve the crisis. Operating through and within
this act would have several implications that profoundly impact the country’s
governance during and beyond the ESKOM crisis. The electricity supply crisis
has thus far exposed massive shortcomings in local, provincial, and local
governance systems. The existing regulatory framework with which interventions
should be procured is integrative enough to allow decentralised responses by
spheres of government whilst maintaining their distinct operational form and
nature. The current crisis should have been managed to be one of the few
contexts with which government would test President Ramaphosa’s District Development
Approach or Model, and thus South Africa’s intergovernmental relations system
and systems.
It is a pity that a
national disaster through the Disaster Management Act had to be activated to
trigger all state actions to respond to the electricity supply management and
maintenance challenges. Accordingly, Section 23 (i) of the Disaster Management
Act provides that when a disastrous event occurs or threatens to occur, the
National Disaster Management Centre must, for the proper application of the
Act, determine whether the event should be regarded as a disaster in terms of
the Act. The National Disaster Management Centre has to classify the disaster
as national, provincial and local. Once it is classified as such, the act
provides for the designation of ‘primary responsibility to a particular sphere
of government for the coordination and management of the disaster, but an organ
of state in another sphere may assist the sphere having primary responsibility
to deal with the disaster and its consequences’. This process vests in the
technical domain of the disaster management discipline and is thus executed by
the Head of the National Disaster Management Centre, an appointed government
official based on his skills and expertise.
Having assessed the
potential magnitude and severity of the ‘now in-ANC, and dare I say, DA defined’
ESKOM disaster, the Head of the National Disaster Management Centre, will then
have to classify it and follow through with processes to set in motion a disaster
management plan. Management prudence might direct the Head of the Disaster
Management Centre to designate the co-ordination to the President as Head of
State and head of the National Executive. This will work notwithstanding the
responsibility and de facto executive authority vesting in the COGTA minister.
The Minister of Minerals and Energy will be effectively disabled to deal with
the ESKOM crisis and indirectly self-suspending the resolution to have SOEs
managed by departments. CUT#.
🤷🏿♂️Shock mihleketo
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