GOOD speech by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
02 June 2022
Note: This is the speech that was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General and Member of Parliament, Brett Herron, during today’s parliamentary debate on the Disaster Amendement Bill.
Disasters, by nature, are unpredictable and pose existential and unforeseen challenges.
Whether they are induced by a pandemic, climate change or civil unrest, mitigating human suffering and loss requires agility from those in charge of managing the response.
Across the world, from Australia to Canada, the Covid pandemic has seen legislators tailoring disaster regulations with a view to better managing future calamities.
South Africa is no exception. Here, as in many other territories, the impact of unprecedented lockdowns was economically disastrous.
Here, as elsewhere, many citizens held strong views about the appropriateness of some of the regulations. Not least, due to the manner in which, while curtailing most of our civil and economic liberties, they seemed to enable the corrupt to flourish.
We don’t all need to agree on everything, but it’s best not to have to conduct our disagreements on the manner of our response and recovery while in the teeth of a disaster.
We therefore do our best to lay down robust frameworks, in advance, suitable to managing a broad swathe of eventualities, because who can tell what the nature of the next disaster will be?
What we do know is that we don’t want government red tape, and excessive consultation, to slow down the ability of the State, at all its levels, to respond in a coordinated fashion.
We don’t want jurisdictional protocols to inhibit emergency operations.
And we don’t want to add another layer of misfortune to disasters by creating conducive conditions for crooks.
The three most recent South African disasters – Covid, last July’s attempted insurrection and the recent flooding in KwaZulu-Natal – demonstrated that there is ample room for improvement in the Disaster Management Act.
We may disagree, as politicians, what steps to take when faced with a Tsunami, a new virus or more social unrest.
What we should all agree, in advance, is that our response is unlikely to be perfect. Because disasters have a way of confounding order and usual logic.
And we should agree that our response must evolve as we learn. As we have just learned from Covid.
In this context, GOOD accepts that our Disaster Management legislation needs to be re-examined frequently so that we can always be as responsive as we can achieve and can act informed by contemporary experience and knowledge.
By putting better strategic contingency plans in place we can limit the negative impacts of the next disaster we face.
What we cannot support are knee-jerk, populist, reactions to the implementation of a national response to an unprecedented event.
In the context of world responses to the Covid-19 pandemic South Africa’s response was neither excessive nor unusual. Errors were made here and abroad, but these cannot be the basis for the amendments proposed.
The amendments do not enhance our response to disasters, they intend to inhibit our response.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 0825183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD: Media Manager
Cell: 0733671223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za