daniel chigunwe
After years of security and oversight gaps, the country needs to reflect on the foodborne crisis and the Stilfontein illegal miner standoff as major inflection points in addressing security and economic tension points.
Over the past few weeks, the South African news cycle has been dominated by two issues that highlighted the broken compact of oversight, law enforcement and economic contestation and displacement. In the basic education sector, a rise in incidences of children dying from consumption of contaminated foods has resulted in over 20 deaths and multiple hospitalisations across the country.
The underlying driver behind the rise in contamination cases seems to be foods that come from the spaza shop value chain where so many children buy food on a daily basis.
The cause of the recent escalation in cases across the country — rather than in specific locations using common value chains – has made it difficult to crack the source. Instead, government has had to proactively advocate for a general closure of spaza shops in order to contain the contamination.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the implementation of measures aimed at curbing the spread of food-borne illnesses associated with spaza shops across the country, he put in place a range of measures that seek to address the health crisis and also address a regulatory and oversight gap.
Spaza shops that operate in various communities and handle food are expected to observe a range of protocols aimed at ensuring food safety and reduce the possibility of infections and contamination.
Failure to observe such protocols increases the risk of food poisoning and puts young children at risk. While the adherence to protocols exists on paper, the spaza shop sector is uniquely difficult to administer and oversee due to its sheer scale — which is simply unknown — and the prevalence of immigrants, both legal and otherwise, who operate in the sector.
In addition to the range of issues associated with spaza shops that interface with children and communities, there is an even less visible value chain that provides goods and services to the spaza shops.
In the period since the rise of foodborne illnesses and the response by government, there has been a range of raids across spaza shops and feeder factories. These raids have highlighted the poor protocols in place that make the possibility of contamination high and pervasive.
This parallel economy, which suffers from poor value chain management and poorer oversight, represents an intersection of various socioeconomic dimensions that have been left unaddressed for far too long.
In a 21-day period granted by the government, spaza shops were expected to be duly registered by municipal authorities in the areas in which they operate.
This should give the country a better understanding of the profile of the spaza shop industry, as well as the range of resources required to oversee it properly.
The problem that immediately emerges is that some spaza shop owners exist outside the net of vigilance and the legal net as they are undocumented immigrants who are loath to present themselves to authorities in any form.
Those who fear being discovered range from spaza shop owners to employees and even factory owners, which creates a challenge for the government as its intentions may be undermined by these non-health considerations. This existence outside formal channels has escalated the tensions between communities and foreign owners of spaza shops, which is not altogether surprising.
For as long as such shops and factories are unknown to the state and invisible to municipal authorities and inspectors, their health and safety protocols will remain unknown and hence rises in foodborne illnesses are going to be attributed to in some part to them.
The hard reality is that such owners of factories and spaza shops need to figure out how to comply with not just the immigration rules of the nation but also the health and safety requirements of the businesses they have chosen to operate.
The fact that immigration, security and healthcare authorities have collectively failed to address an escalating problem over an extended period is a hard reality of where we are — but given the crisis we face, the state can no longer defer difficult conversations regarding the question of documenting those that operate within the economy.
Illegal mining
A secondary manifestation of this polycrisis has been evident in the standoff at Stilfontein mine, where the prevalence of undocumented immigrants operating in shafts that should have been closed off has created a new crisis. — Moneyweb
The implementation of the rule of law – where police are applying the rules as they exist – has faced backlash from some civil society organisations and community forums which insist that the state should not be preventing the delivery of supplies to illegal miners.
Such a proposition implies that because the application of the law has been left lacking for so long, any belated application thereof undermines the rights of those who are underground.
The danger inherent in such an assertion is that it promotes the idea that, since so much has gone wrong across the security and oversight value chain that it has created a large illicit and parallel economy in mining, South Africa should accept this as the way things are.
The danger with such a proposition is that it concedes that we may as well abandon the laws as they are and let such industries fester beyond the ambit of oversight and regulation.
State has blindfolded itself
The problem here is that in the absence of some semblance of awareness of how wide and entrenched such industries are, it is the same government that will be none the wiser about where the risks are concentrated – and will plan accordingly.
This means that when something goes wrong in such invisible economic chains – as we have seen in the foodborne illnesses and the Stilfontein standoff, with the number of affected people still unknown in both cases – the deployment of public resources to sort out the issue will be a reactive exercise.
As a result, poor resource allocation and deployment is likely and the inevitable delay of solutions will likely see more lives lost.
One hopes that the country and the state take these two case studies as a springboard for addressing the various gaps that must be tackled in order to avoid a repeat of the current problems. Moneyweb
Bongani Ndlovu