Abstract
It is anticipated that the occurrence and intensity of disasters will increase globally and in South Africa where typical disasters include droughts, floods, extreme hailstorms, gales, fires and earthquakes, as well as sinkholes arising from mining activity in dolomitic areas. Disasters such as these result in human suffering and damage to the resources and infrastructure on which South Africans rely for their survival and the maintenance of their quality of life. Section 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 affords to everyone the right to an environment that is not harmful to his or her health and well-being. It may be argued that a person's sense of environmental security in relation to the potential risks and dangers of disaster falls within the scope of the protection provided by section 24. The responsibility to intervene for the protection of the interests inherent in the constitutional environmental right lies with the government of South Africa. Disaster management specifically is a functional area of competence of national and provincial government, but practice has shown that the actual implementation of and planning for disaster management happens in the local government sphere. Against the backdrop of these introductory discussions and, given the fact that several municipalities in South Africa are under-resourced, this article very specifically aims to critically discuss and describe from a legal perspective the potential and function of public-private partnerships (PPPs) between local government (municipalities) and the private sector (such as industries) in fulfilling the legally entrenched disaster management mandate of municipalities. Through a critical evaluation of some existing PPPs, this article illustrates that the private sector has a key role to play in assisting municipalities to fulfil their legally entrenched disaster management mandate.
Highlights
Since the dawn of their existence human beings have been affected by disasters.[1]
With the above discussion in mind, it is submitted that municipalities in South Africa are, for the purposes of service delivery able to enter into private partnership (PPP) agreements
The Tokyo Gas and DHL partnerships[186] included their own specially trained staff, volunteer groups, members of the community and various large corporations in their disaster management initiatives.[187]. Including these stakeholders provided a wide network within which disaster management activities could take place, instead of such activities being the effort of the local authorities and their PPP partners alone
Summary
Since the dawn of their existence human beings have been affected by disasters.[1]. It is trite that disasters[1] often result in the serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society, as they may involve human, material or environmental loss and damage which often exceeds the ability of an affected community to recover by using its own resources.[2]. Despite the support and successes of PPPs for service delivery purposes,[19] the current legal framework for LDM and PPPs in general does not provide any guidelines on the use of PPPs for disaster management purposes.[20] currently no PPPs have been undertaken or planned for between municipalities and the private sector in South Africa for LDM purposes.[21] It appears that the potential and function of PPPs between local government (municipalities) and the private sector (industries etc.) in fulfilling the legally entrenched disaster management duties of municipalities has been largely underutilised in the disaster management arena. See Van Niekerk 2014 Disasters 858-877 for an in-depth discussion of the inadequacies of South Africa's disaster management legal framework as it pertains to issues of implementation of law and policy and the poor governance and management of institutional disaster management structures and functionaries etc
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