Pretoria -The intermittent load shedding imposed by Eskom could potentially pose security threats in South Africa.
This was the concern expressed by experts who were part of the discussions organised by the National Press Club in Pretoria yesterday.
Panel members discussed and assessed the risk posed by load shedding and the electricity tariff hike to national security in the country.
Gareth Newham, head of governance, crime and justice division at the Institute of Security Studies, said some insurance figures had shown an increase in claims because of house burglaries taking place during load shedding and experienced mostly on weekends.
“Load shedding is a very worrying factor that piles on to a number of other factors that weaken public security situation,” he said.
He said load shedding came at a precarious time in South Africa’s recent history. For example, he said that the statistics showed that murders had grown by 54% from 1994 to 2012.
In addition, he said the ability of the police to solve murders dropped by 55% in 2012 and last year they could only solve 14% of crime.
He said the consequence of the police’s ability was seen in July 2021 during riots in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
Newham said there had not been any improvement in the recent five years in the current administration in terms of the ability to solve various crimes such as armed robberies.
He, however, said there had been improvement in organisations such as the NPA and Special Investigating Unit.
Lunga Dweba, director of Geopolitical Intelligence Advisory, remarked that the situation of load shedding posed a security threat.
“The actions that followed after Nersa’s tariff increase are the ones that concern us; not necessarily the protest actions or court applications but the violent action that follow based on the decision that was made by Nersa,” he said.
He said during protest actions there may be sporadic action of violence.
What was more concerning to him was the growing appetite for lawlessness.
“An example is the unrest in July 2021 where the trace of those that planned it are not known, except the few that were arrested, who are not the planners. Of concern are acts that are planned and executed without trace.”
Grant Clark from Cash-in-Transit Association of South Africa, said load shedding was extremely concerning for the cash distribution industry.
He explained that in South Africa the disruption of cash distribution adversely affect the economy.
“It costs a lot of money to put the generation systems and we see those costs going up all the time,” Clark said.
He said that the possibility of a total blackout, as some experts have warned, would be disastrous for the country, and collaborative work was being done to put contingency plans in place to deal with a possible total shutdown.
South African Banking Risk Information Centre’s Nischal Mewalall said load shedding had a specific focus for the banking industry.
“We have been taking steps to evaluate and identify the type of scenarios that could develop as load shedding begins to pan out,” he said.
One of the scenarios, he said, had been the impact of State 8, and the potential of what could happen if there was a total collapse.
He said the banking industry had looked at load shedding impact to banks’ operations and function as well as the crime and security associated with it. “At the end of the day, our plans don’t solve load shedding rather we tend to solve business continuity.”
He said the banking industry had not observed any disruption arising out of the protest actions.
Load shedding, he said, was already disrupting the ability for use of online services or telephone banking.
“In the event where we have Stage 8 load shedding, he said, people would find it difficult to communicate.”
Pretoria News