Cllr Maphetlhe - The Executive Mayor – Tlokwe Local Municipality
Prof Frik van Niekerk (Deputy Chancellor, Research, Innovation and Technology, North-West University)
Prof. Kenneth Hewitt (Laurier University in Canada),
Terry Jeggle (University of Pittsburgh, USA),
Dr Ignacio Leon (Head UN-OCHA: Southern Africa),
Oscar Ebalu (UN-International Strategy for Disaster Reduction-Africa)
Dr Maureen Fordham (University of Northumbria, UK)
Conference Organisers and
Fellow Conference Participants!
“The known is finite, the unknown infinite: intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability.”
(Thomas Huxley: “On the Reception of the Origin of Species”, 1887.)
I would like to profusely offer the sincerest gratitude to the organisers of this conference for having allowed space and time for us to open such an important academic conference, taking place in the hallowed corridors of one of the most prestigious universities in our country and continent. I offer this gratitude as I do on behalf of our Premier, the Provincial Government and the people of the North West Province.
I therefore thank the North West University for paying host to this highly meaningful and prestigious event here in Potchefstroom, our city of expertise in the North West, our Platinum Province. It will be inadequate not to salute our international guests, more especially our guest who have assembled here today to deepen our theoretical perspectives on matters disaster and disaster reduction. We hope you will enjoy your stay in our beautiful province!
Program Director, the significance of this conference is underscored by the distinguished presence of a galaxy of personalities from diverse stations of professional and academic life who are part of this momentous occasion and I am taking a singular honour on behalf of our provincial government to address the great minds gathered here for the next three days.
This conference takes place six weeks after our country and the entire global village witnessed a major catastrophe since the advent of a new constitutional dispensation in 1994, with the killing of mineworkers here in our province in Marikana. The events of Marikana is a stark reminder to all of us that we continue to live in a country with abject poverty, exploitation and inequalities which if not attended to urgently and substantively, will have profound negative implications for our people especially the poor and for the legacy of Nelson Mandela of nation building, reconciliation and prosperity for all.
Programme Director, we have hope that that this biennial conference will have the possibility and intellectual stamina to pierce through the unimaginable panoramas of time deep into our common intellectual faculties as humanity - to offer us the true insight of what constitute a disaster and attendant to that - what should constitute our unavoidable collective response to such disaster as may visit us from time to time.
I am quite certain that you will have the possibility and the rigorous zeal to elaborate detailed plans on how we should in unison strive to assuage, the occurrence of disaster in our localities consistent with the International Strategy for Disaster Management- that calls for pro-action rather than reaction.
Programme Director, I am certain that we would not waste time here in this conference with what we know- for what we know is finite- rather we would occupy ourselves with the quest to deepen our understanding of what is infinite and unknown!
What we know currently and what I am made to believe is that Southern Africa does not have many platforms to coordinate Disaster Reduction Responses!
Therefore basing myself on the announced purposes of this conference to establish a platform for integrated planning, I would like to congratulate the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University together with the Southern Africa Society for Disaster Reduction for organising such an important gathering with such illustrious guests as lined up in your conference programme.
In the same work to which we have earlier referred Thomas Huxley makes bold to say “A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man a man of restless and versatile intellect who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice”.
Having made a special appeal to you, colleagues, to concentrate on the unknown to which Huxley refers as infinite – our debates should themselves not be infinite! In a manner of speaking and paraphrasing Huxley we should with all the necessary effort avoid to plunge into scientific questions with which we have no real acquaintance and thereby obscure them with aimless rhetoric! Never should it be that this conference is used to distract the attention of our audience from the real point of disaster reduction- by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to academic disaster management jargon!
Neither should our intellect be so restless and versatile that we endeavour to reinvent the wheel by trying to change what we already know. This by no means suggests that we should be comfortable with what we know and not enquire further into the unknown!
I am well aware of the calibre of the intellectuals gathered here and the strength of their mental faculties, therefore I would not attempt to educate you on the field and intellectual discipline for which you have studied. It is however very important for me at this stage to proffer to you the support of our provincial government!
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a matter of common knowledge that disasters have become a stumbling block to sustainable development in South Africa, Africa and the world. We have witnessed the interaction between hazards and vulnerabilities creating mayhem on our social, economic, technological, environmental and political systems.
The interaction between the two had setback development and increased poverty and hardships. It is perhaps an important point to remember that United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)- defines a disaster as an occurrence that disturbs the normal functioning of a community. It further says that such an occurrence can be regarded a disaster when its ramifications are so dire that the affected community cannot deal with it within the confines of its own resources!
I would also like to venture to suggest that due to lack of planning on our part we are the creators of some of the disaster we see around the world. Our inability to collectively take ownership of the early warning systems as emitted by our technology and lack of appropriate action put many communities at risk!
Programme Director, I am led to believe that one of the objectives of this prestigious conference is to find common understanding to and inculcate the culture of disaster reduction through the process of scientific hazard identification, analysis and prioritisation, as well as the vulnerability assessment and analysis.
It therefore should I imagine follow that the process I mentioned above cannot be achieved by a single organisation. The kind of brains gathered here would I believe agree with me that this is a kind of effort that requires a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach where government, private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and communities work together to assuage the risk of disaster and help lessen the impact of such.
As I said earlier we as the government of the North West Province and its political leadership fully support disaster reduction planning across all spheres of government and sectors of society. We for our part offer valuable support to our local government sphere, a point to which I shall return later.
It is therefore instructive that working together include among other things better utilisation of scarce resources for disaster reduction. The outcome of which will be the separation between hazards and vulnerable elements thereby creating safer and disaster resilient communities.
With climate change upon us, it should be business unusual as our conventional methods of conducting our lives are no longer effective or sustainable. What this means is that we should collectively work together to ensure that our actions as individuals, organisations and society are congruent to our common aspiration to achieve a world with less occurrence of disastrous risk.
Programme Director, I believe that given the capacity of the eminent academics present here this conference would produce meaningful thought of solutions to the common problems we face.
The divide between the rich and developed countries and the poor and underdeveloped countries contours the debate, on climate change and the kind of human actions that instigate it. Some have even went to the extent of saying that the rich countries have used methods that damaged the environment and now that they are rich they refuse the poor and underdeveloped to do the same to achieve similar levels of development.
This in an apparent gate keeping to the doors of development and opulence! Thus those who are poor should of necessity remain poor and marginalised. The question to which this conference must attend is what it is that the rest of humanity should do to dull the risk of disaster or respond to a disaster once it has paid a visit to humanity?
In a similar vein, what is it that we should collectively do to assist a people to rise from the ashes or washes of a disaster to rebuild their own lives after an unwelcomed disastrous visit?
I say this and ask this questions as I do because there is some level of consensus that the kind of development path that we have commonly traversed over the last century as humanity has come to haunt us through unpredictable whether patterns. This I’m educated to believe is occasioned by our blatant disregard to our environment and our quest to amass material wealth at all costs.
South Africa, as a member of the global village has aligned itself with the United Nations call for countries to make disaster reduction part of the national, provincial and local development planning processes. This we do despite the fact that we are a developing country with less resources, technologies and or material wealth to match the countries of the north.
Programme Director, to this end we have elaborated policy and promulgated legislation for national disaster management that call for:
- The establishment and maintenance of integrated institutional capacity for disaster risk management at each sphere of government.
- Disaster risk assessment.
- Disaster risk reduction
- Disaster response, recovery and rehabilitation.
Through the North West Provincial Disaster Management Centre, which is responsible for the provincial coordination of disaster management and reduction efforts, we have made good progress namely:
- The provincial disaster management policy framework was approved and adopted by the Provincial Cabinet in December 2011.
- The Provincial Disaster Management Advisory Forum which is fully functional (meets quarterly).
- An Interim Provincial Disaster Management Center with personnel exists.
- Ten provincial departments have developed level 1 disaster management plans.
- The department also supports municipalities with the building of disaster management centres, development of municipal disaster management plans as well as procurement of other equipment.
Ladies and gentlemen, disaster risk management is everybody’s business and therefore it requires strong facilitation and coordination expertise with a high level of transition and paradigm shift from reactive to proactive disaster risk reduction as I mentioned earlier.
In conclusion Programme Director, I wish you well in your deliberations and hope that what you debate here will in the end produce a tangible programme of action that will convince policy makers to correct some of the wrongs you may identify.
It is my wish that you do not- to paraphrase Huxley- plunge into scientific questions with which you have no real acquaintance of, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric!
Kea Leboga!
Ndi’abulela!
I thank you
