ANC wants Dlamini-Zuma in charge of load-shedding state of disaster

[Nat Quinn]

The ANC wants Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to lead South Africa’s efforts to resolve the load-shedding crisis in a national state of disaster.

According to the Sunday newspaper Rapport, this was one of the recommendations made at the ruling party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) lekgotla last week.

At the same time, however, there is mounting pressure from within President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet to reject the recommendation, “impeccable” sources have told Rapport.

Those opposed to the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (COGTA) guiding the country’s energy recovery efforts have warned her decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic made her highly unpopular with South African voters.

Ramaphosa is expected to announce a reshuffled cabinet within days of his 2023 state of the nation address on 9 February.

Several political experts believe that the 74-year-old Dlamini-Zuma will be among the ministers getting axed.

Aside from her falling out of favour with the general public, she also appears to have become an outright political enemy of Ramaphosa.

Dlamini-Zuma was one of four ANC members of Parliament who voted to adopt the much-criticised Section 89 report into the Phala Phala farm scandal, refusing to toe the party line on the matter.

The ANC is taking disciplinary action against her for this decision.

But one NEC member told Rapport that the NEC’s resolution to declare a state of disaster to fix the energy crisis had saved Dlamini-Zuma from losing her government position.

Another member argued that the COGTA minister had experience handling a state of disaster and was the “right person” for the job.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South African minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs. Credit: GCIS

Dlamini-Zuma was heavily criticised for some of the controversial state of disaster measures her department implemented as part of lockdowns to help curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Many experts argued that some of these measures had little or no scientific basis and were not aligned with the best approaches taken by other countries.

These included prohibiting ecommerce in the early days of the hard lockdown and barring the sale of open-toed shoes, underwear, and cooked food once some physical stores were allowed to reopen.

But perhaps most notorious were the prolonged bans on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes.

At one point during the pandemic, Dlamini-Zuma went directly against Ramaphosa’s announcement that the ban would be lifted.

The bans are estimated to have cost the government R1.5 billion in sin taxes every month.

At the same time, the illegal cigarette trade flourished, a trend that seemingly continued well after all lockdowns were lifted.

British American Tobacco, one of the biggest companies in South Africa, announced in January that it had started retrenchment proceedings and could lay off up to 200 employees.

It cited the illegal cigarette trade as the main reason for the loss of revenue that has led to job cuts.

The company said that since 2019 it had lost around 40% of its cigarette sales to the illicit market, which now makes up 70% of South Africa’s total cigarette sales.

The highly-contentious lockdown restrictions led to the business interest organisation Sakeliga taking Dlamini-Zuma to court.

In November 2022, Sakeliga obtained an order that the minister must provide it with the records of data she relied on when she declared the state of national disaster in March 2020 and repeatedly extended it.

Dlamini-Zuma failed to do so by the order’s stipulated date of 22 December 2022.

As a result of this failure, Sakeliga is filing an application to find the minister guilty of contempt of court.

Concerns that Covid-19 state of disaster corruption could be repeated

The Democratic Alliance favours the declaration of a state of disaster and says it is taking practical steps to ensure it has built-in safeguards to prevent the “feeding frenzy” seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, economists, energy experts, and other opposition parties are concerned that a state of disaster would reopen the gates for large-scale corruption and fraud.

Once again, a state of disaster would allow the government to implement certain drastic measures and commit funding to such efforts without the typical Parliamentary oversight.

Energy analyst Chris Yelland proposed the declaration of a national state of disaster over the energy crisis in a paper in 2022.

But he says months have passed since his original recommendation and he now believes the mechanism could be used to facilitate and expedite the wrong decisions and actions he had not envisioned.

“A big concern that I have is that this, in fact, is not driven by concerns towards South Africa and the effects of load-shedding,” Yelland said.

“My concern is that it is more driven by ANC politics in the face of the looming elections next year. In other words, the real disaster driving this for the ANC is the impact on its party and not the country.”

Some experts also believe that many mechanisms that would speed up South Africa’s energy recovery under a state of disaster are already provided for in existing laws.

ANC wants Dlamini-Zuma in charge of load-shedding state of disaster (mybroadband.co.za)

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