The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, during one of her many press conferences on the response to the pandemic. (GCIS)
news analysis
- South Africa needs “a single point of command” in the electricity crisis, says President Cyril Ramaphosa.
- And, as of Thursday night, that is his once-bitter political rival, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
- Dlamini Zuma now has the same overwhelming power he had to fight covid-19, right down to the ability to ban alcoholic beverages and cigarettes.
- The disaster management system was never reformed.
- Dlamini Zuma is immune from removal, and as it stands, the new electricity minister will answer to her.
- For more stories, visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
In 2015, and many, many times since, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised that cargo reduction would soon be history.
For the past five years, Ramaphosa has been where every dollar stops, but for years before that, he was the deputy savior of Jacob Zuma’s Eskom, setting up war rooms and commanding structural changes to the electrical system.
On Thursday night, he handed that torch, or perhaps a poisoned chalice, to Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the candidate he defeated to become president despite her endorsement by the ANC faction known primarily as the Transformation group. Radical Economics (RET).
That gives Dlamini Zuma a tremendous amount of power both theoretical and practical, which ANC politics will make almost impossible to wrest from him again.
“At a time of crisis, we need a single command point and a single line of march,” Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation address, in what was likely intended as a follow-up to his recent message on load reduction: everyone needs to unite to solve a problem that the government fabricated.
But 50 words later, Ramaphosa referred to a newly declared national state of electrical disaster, and that document makes Dlamini Zuma the sole point of command.
In its invocation of legal powers, the disaster declaration is a direct copy of the one that put South Africa in a state of disaster due to Covid-19. He gives exactly the same five reasons why Dlamini Zuma might issue “instructions” or rule by decree: to protect the public, offer aid, protect property, combat disturbance, and “cope with the destructive nature and other effects of the disaster.” “.
That language was created to deal with the type of commonly declared disasters in South Africa, mostly droughts and floods. But when Covid-19 hit, Dlamini Zuma used those powers to close borders, decree what clothing stores can sell and impose a curfew, or gave other ministers the delegated power to do so.
At the time, and in his subsequent defense against legal challenges from irate citizens, he justified such drastic measures on the grounds that the coronavirus could have killed many more people but for those steps.
On electricity, Dlamini Zuma has declared that a state of disaster is required to prevent the total collapse of the grid, something so serious that it could be said that it justifies actions as extreme as those taken to prevent the coronavirus from overwhelming health facilities. .
Under a state of disaster, Dlamini Zuma’s actions are not subject to review by Parliament. She can extend the national state of disaster indefinitely. Efforts to reform disaster laws, to change both, got nowhere.
During the Covid-19 state of disaster, the courts proved slow and generally loathe to intervene.
That leaves Ramaphosa as the only check on Dlamini Zuma’s powers. She can instantly and without reason remove her from office, which would immediately end her ability to issue decrees. However, given the deep division within his party, firing Dlamini Zuma would almost certainly trigger an attempt to remove Ramaphosa himself, with a real chance of success.
Electricity would have its own minister, Ramaphosa said Thursday night, “to take full responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity crisis response.”
Except not quite. Any normal ministerial power is nullified by a state of disaster, and in a state of disaster other ministers, say a new electricity minister, have exactly the additional powers delegated to him by the cooperative government minister.
So, for better or worse, the ultimate responsibility will remain with Dlamini Zuma, as long as he holds that position.
