Analysing the natural disaster and related legislations of South Africa in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

South Africa and the world at large continue to experience storms of natural disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic which pose a great negative impact on people’s livelihood such as loss of lives. To mitigate such negative effects and respond effectively to natural disasters, there is a need for legislative frameworks and policies that must guide the process. In South Africa for instance, disaster legislations were used by the government to inform and guide their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is from this background that the researcher developed a hunch to analyse the South African natural disaster and related legislations that were applicable to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. This study adopted the non-empirical research method wherein existing literature was reviewed. The researcher reviewed and analysed documents on the South African disaster legislation from search engines such as EBSCOhost, google scholar and ProQuest. The inductive Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) was used to analyse the collected data. The primary finding of this study revealed that legislation played an important role in guiding the COVID-19 response of the South African government. The underlined conclusion suggests that disaster legislation, programs and policies should focus on effective prevention, effective reduction, promotion of well-being, and harmless responses to individuals.