Budgeting for South Africa’s disaster management

By Claudi Mailovich

[In South Africa], tragedies come back in loops. Disaster comes not only in the form of flames, but also droughts and flash floods. And insufficient underlying infrastructure compounds the problems for disaster management efforts.

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But Sabelo Gwala, of the SA Local Government Association (Salga), tells the FM that the lack of disaster risk reduction is one of the challenges SA faces in disaster management. He says Salga lobbied hard to ensure local municipalities could plan for and respond to disasters, something that is contained in the act as a result. But when adequate disaster risk management structures were being established in municipalities, it soon became clear that very few municipalities had completed disaster risk assessments. This, he says, is now a priority.

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Gwala says it is important that national funding be set aside for risk reduction because municipal funding is "consistently" focused towards service delivery, expansion of delivery networks and revenue collection, which makes it difficult to fund disaster risk reduction at the local level.

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But it’s not just about funding. [Dewald Van Niekerk, professor and director of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University,] says the research done at the centre has found that there is money available — but the capacity to use it effectively is lacking. He says their research has found that, on a local level, politicians do not always understand the task of the disaster management centres, and that funds are used to appoint "cronies".

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