Calls to declare a new state of disaster in South Africa
Throughout 2022, rampant theft of cables and essential infrastructure amounted to economic sabotage of South Africa’s future growth prospects, threatening investment, employment security, livelihoods and community safety – leading to calls for the declaration of a state of disaster in South Africa.
The Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Business Chamber has sent a formal request to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to take this drastic step to protect public assets that are essential to service delivery and supporting investment and job creation.
“We don’t advocate for such a step lightly, especially given that the country has only recently emerged from two years of successive states of disaster imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“However, a state of disaster of this nature should not affect the daily lives and movement of the general public, as it would be specifically targeted at protecting infrastructure and monitoring, tracking down and prosecuting the perpetrators of these crimes,” said NMB Business CEO Denise van Huyssteen.
According to the NMB Business Chamber, throughout 2022, copper cable and infrastructure theft from rail and electricity networks are estimated to cost the economy R45 billion annually, while the broader knock-on impact of cable theft across the economy is estimated to be R187 billion.
NMB Business Chamber’s CEO Denise van Huyssteen (middle) with the department of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan (left) and Business Chamber board president Loyiso Dotwana (right)
Van Huyssteen said that the Business Chamber Board believed that cable and infrastructure theft, vandalism, and sabotage are the greatest current threat to the South African economy and that it met the criteria for a state of disaster as specified in the Disaster Management Act.
The criteria met regarding the definition of a disaster in the Act are as follows, as outlined by van Huyssteen:
- Theft of cables and infrastructure and associated vandalism is widespread across the country;
- It is human-caused and can (and does) lead to death or injury;
- It causes damage to property, infrastructure and the environment. There is also the knock-on effect of lost productivity and wages;
- It is disruptive to the life of a community, in the inconvenience of electricity and water outages caused by theft, and in the resulting loss of lives and livelihoods; and
- It is also clear that the magnitude and scale of the problem are beyond the ability of individual municipalities, state-owned enterprises, metro police services and national security and intelligence services acting alone to secure infrastructure adequately, prevent these crimes, and enforce the law with sufficient deterrent effect.
Rampant sabotage in 2022
This call for the declaration of a state of disaster by the NMB Business Chamber comes after a year of unprecedented amounts of sabotage reports from critical state-owned enterprises such as Eskom, Transnet, Telkom, and The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).
Throughout 2022, Transnet reported the theft of hundreds of kilometres of copper cable, costing billions of rands to replace. In November, a train with 97 carts loaded with coal was derailed and overturned on its way to Richards Bay – stopping the movement of any other goods on the railway.
TFR told City Press that the incidents on the northern corridor are a clear sign of it being attacked by organised crime groups, with the CEO of the Road Freight Association, Gavin Kelly, noting that vested interest groups would not hesitate to resort to sabotage to improve their own business.
Similarly, Eskom has also reported high levels of sabotage, theft and vandalism – including the theft of coal, the theft of diesel, the theft of cables, bomb threats, fraud and corruption, and sabotage.
Some cases reported by Eskom include almost 6,000kg of aluminium being stolen, Hundreds of thousands of rands in stolen diesel, several truck drivers arrested for stealing coal, and a maintenance worker who sabotaged one of its units at the Camden power station to ensure the procurement of more work – among many other reports.
After such high levels of reported theft, vandalism and sabotage at state-owned enterprises, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said in November that “he’s questioning the criminal justice system’s commitment to combating crimes against the state,” which seems to back van Huyssteen’s notion that the magnitude and scale of the problem are beyond the ability of the state to secure infrastructure adequately, prevent these crimes, and enforce the law with sufficient deterrent effect.
How a declaration of a state of disaster will help
The Business Chamber said it welcomed the coordinating initiatives of the CEOs of Eskom, Prasa, Telkom and Transnet through the Economic Sabotage of Critical Infrastructure Forum and believes that the state of disaster would unlock the national resources to take this initiative further.
According to van Huyssteen, the state of disaster would help bring to bear the scourge of cable theft and vandalism by:
- Unlocking national government resources and personnel as a focused, coordinated emergency response;
- Enable checks on the movement of goods and suspects, cross-agency coordination of intelligence, policing and prosecutions, emergency procurement, and facilitate cross-border assistance to tackle organised crime;
- Enable the necessary urgency and priority and coordinated efforts across government departments and law enforcement and prosecution agencies required to turn the tide on cable and infrastructure theft and vandalism; and
- Enable the assignment of extraordinary short-term powers to security services, intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the pursuit of suspects.
The Business Chamber also said the recent moves by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition to temporarily ban scrap metal exports and tighten up the regulations on local and international trade in scrap metal are welcomed and should form part of the state of disaster response.
“Declaration of a state of disaster is a drastic step, but it’s imperative if we are to restore an environment conducive to community life, business, employment and socio-economic development,” said van Huyssteen.
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