Abstract
Disasters are becoming an unavoidable part of everyday life throughout the world, including South Africa. Even though South Africa is not a country affected by large-scale disasters such as earthquakes, the impact of disasters in South Africa is aggravated significantly by the vulnerability of people living in informal settlements. Humanitarian logistics, as a ‘new’ sub-field in the supply chain management context, has developed significantly recently to assist in disaster situations. This paper provides an overview of the South African humanitarian logistics context. Even though humanitarian logistics plays a critical role in the aftermath of disasters, it extends far beyond events that can typically be classified as ‘disasters’. Therefore the implication of the South African humanitarian logistics context on future research and collaboration opportunities in South African humanitarian logistics is also discussed. Finally, two recent case studies in the South African humanitarian logistics environment are discussed.
Highlights
Disasters have become an unavoidable part of everyday life
South Africa is not internationally recognised as a country affected by large-scale disasters and the need for disaster management in South Africa is often neglected
Even though the smaller-scale disasters occurring in South Africa may be regarded as minor, the reality is that the impact of a seemingly negligible disaster can be exacerbated significantly due to the living conditions and subsequent vulnerability of people living in informal settlements
Summary
Disasters have become an unavoidable part of everyday life. Within the first three months of 2010 the world witnessed three major earthquakes:. The South African humanitarian logistics context can be expanded from merely considering conventional disasters in South Africa to a field that includes the operations of various NGOs and NPOs that attempt to relieve any form of human suffering caused by ‘disastrous events’ not normally classified as disasters. The first is a case study at Heartbeat by Du Plessis, Bean, Schoeman and Botha (2011) and the second a case study at the South African Breastmilk Reserve (SABR) by Bean, Viljoen, Modise, Cooper and Schoeman (2010) Both case studies focused on developing sustainable solutions to help NPOs to improve their operations and ability to deal with non-traditional disasters. After performing various data-gathering and pre-processing activities, Du Plessis et al (2011) were able to obtain a solution for this application
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