AYABONGA CAWE: Let’s hope state of disaster will take care of spoilt food in fridges too

To term what we are going through a crisis is to not only opine on the self-evident, but to recognise it, as Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci did, as a “process rather than an event”. The commonly understood economic notion of a crisis draws on biological and medical references that imply temporary imbalance or disequilibrium, that there is an impending remedy or return to the norm. Yet our crisis is far from temporary, nor is it an event. Nor is a return to any norm possible.

Ending load-shedding is not a terminal event but a process that will itself cause significant tensions, conflicts, trade-offs and contradictions. It will ultimately result in winners as well as losers and add to the growing legion of the indifferent and despondent. As Gramsci says, seeing a crisis as a process yields neither salvation nor death, as the suspension between life and death can be indefinite.

That we call Eskom’s predicament and its fallout a crisis does not imply that any actions we take will inevitably give rise to a happy ending. Nor should that resign us to despondent inactivity or indecision. Rather, introducing the possibility of indefinite load-shedding is about recognising the need to continually respond to the root, the stems and the outgrowth of this crisis.

Another Italian philosopher and author, Dario Gentili, observes that to respond to the inevitable “outgrowths” in the social psych arising from the uncertainty triggered by crisis the subjective states of mind are “(mis) trust, credit, guilt, expectation, fear and sacrifice”.

Load-shedding is filled with all of these characteristic features of crisis, and the declaration of a national state of disaster is intended to “roll out emergency procurement solutions and to roll them out faster”, as suggested by Thembeka Sobekwa of Mianzo Asset Management on MetroFMTalk last week.

Lost inventory

Yet emergency procurement has occurred in the past by ministerial determination, so the declaration of the disaster may also be about filling the arsenal with enough tools to deal with the immediate outgrowths, while the medium- to long-term activities to improve existing plant availability, undertake maintenance, incentivise household and industrial rooftop solar and transmission investments and other areas outlined in the Energy Action Plan are under way.

It seems the disaster declaration is also about, as section 27 of the Disaster Act states, “dealing with the destructive and other effects of the disaster” and taking any other steps to prevent the escalation of the crisis. Not just the roots of it, but the stems and outgrowth. That’s the lost inventory, lost trading hours and the spoilt food in our fridges, I hope.

Furthermore — and this has received limited reporting — the disaster declaration may also trigger other indirect emergency measures outside typical on-budget or on-balance sheet financing, used under exceptional circumstances to assist firms in the manufacturing sector.

For instance, amendments to the Automotive Production & Development Programme allow auto manufacturers affected by disaster events to access a deviation from the normal rules to claim and accrue production incentive credits. Similarly, after the July 2021 riots we saw how the declaration of a disaster unlocked access for affected producers to a rebate provision that allowed them to import goods duty free in cases of a national disaster as per the Customs & Excise Act.

Rechargeable lights

Measures must also include strong accountability and risk management frameworks, as many South Africans associate any move towards a state of disaster as a means to clear the way for corruption.

While some instruments exist in the toolkit, the challenge may be around the design and implementation of programmes extending such relief measures, and those arising from such a state of disaster, to households and small firms. Through subsidisation and provision of rechargeable lights, inverters and residential solar for poor households, generator subsidies for small businesses and other forms of support.

These measures may shift the focus towards viewing this as a crisis with numerous dimensions. To do so is to recognise that this crisis has ceased to be just about Megawatt Park, but rather its contagion has infected and disrupted all social and economic activity.

• Cawe is a development economist and author.