Disaster regulations reinforce Solidarity’s case against state of disaster

28 February 2023

Solidarity says the regulations that Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma proclaimed yesterday reinforce its case against the government over the state of disaster to deal with the energy crisis. According to Solidarity, all the measures contained in the regulations could, and should already have been implemented by using existing legislation.

“These regulations and the state of disaster are much rather a step back in the fight against the energy crisis. This also confirms our initial position that everything the government wants to achieve with the state of disaster could have been done long ago by using existing instruments at its disposal,” Solidarity Chief Executive Dr Dirk Hermann explains. 

Solidarity further pointed out that the regulations do not pave the way for sound management of the crisis at all, and that the relaxation of oversight measures drastically increases the risk of poor management. 

Solidarity added that the amount of power conferred on the Minister of Cooperative Development is extremely worrying.

“The underlying ideas include a mixture of bad, very bad and meaningless regulations. And even if there were good ones, the fact that in terms of these regulations practically all control over the management of the crisis will fall under Minister Dlamini-Zuma would undo even that. The regulations only centralised the responsibilities of the government and Eskom around one of our most questionable ministers. All these things should have happened a long time ago; however, there is no reason to think that they will happen faster because Minister Dlamini-Zuma is now taking control of the whole process,” Hermann concluded.

Issued by Connie Mulder, Head, Solidarity Research Institute, 28 February 2023