RMI applies to slam brakes on minister’s waste tyre manouevres
ANOTHER high court showdown over the government’s waste tyre recycling plan is looming between the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) and the Department of Environmental Affairs.
The department was served with another urgent high court application by the RMI on December 12.
Vishal Premlall, the national director of the Tyre Dealers and Fitment Association, an RMI member, said the RMI had lodged the application and requested the matter be heard on January 15.
The department said the application was seeking to review and set aside the decision by Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa to withdraw the approval of the previous Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of SA (Redisa) waste tyre management plan and approve Redisa’s current plan.
This followed the RMI on November 20 being granted a temporary interdict by the North Gauteng High Court halting the implementation of the previous Redisa plan.
The interdict was granted, pending the hearing of the RMI’s main application for an order reviewing and setting aside the approval of the Redisa plan by Molewa.
This application is likely to be heard some time this year.
Molewa on November 30 withdrew the previous Redisa plan and approved and gazetted the current Redisa plan for immediate implementation.
The department said the temporary interdict judgment obtained by the RMI was in favour of the department and Redisa on all material aspects apart from Judge Neil Tuchten finding paragraph 15.1 of the integrated industry waste tyre management plan (IIWTMP) constituted a material amendment of the plan and should have been re-gazetted for comment after its insertion.
This paragraph dealt with the waste reduction targets of the Redisa plan.
The department said Judge Tuchten suggested a remedy: to re-gazette the plan without paragraph 15.1 for immediate implementation.
“The minister has reconsidered the matter in totality and decided to withdraw the approval of the said IIWTMP and another IIWTMP was approved. This effectively disposed of the review application… as the plan, which was the subject of the review, was no longer relevant,” it said.
The RMI said last month that its legal teams were considering the legal position regarding “many questionable aspects surrounding the legitimacy of the withdrawal of the previously approved Redisa plan and the approval of another Redisa plan”.
It said the withdrawal of the approval of the previous plan meant members’ subscriptions to that plan had “no legal consequence” and tyre producers would need to re-subscribe and tyre dealers re-register with the current Redisa plan.
In terms of the waste tyre regulations, all relevant parties were required to comply with the new approved plan within 60 days after November 30, which the RMI calculated as January 29, but the department disagreed.
It said everyone registered with Redisa would have to comply with the approved IIWTMP plan “with immediate effect”.
Douw Breedt of Barnard Incorporated, the RMI’s attorneys, said they believed Molewa had acted irregularly and was not permitted in terms of the waste tyre regulations to withdraw one waste tyre plan and approve another for immediate implementation.
SOUTH Africa is in the midst of a profound economic crisis, which is causing instability and deformations in our psychological, social, moral and cultural life, and which, if not resolved, shall cause severe political upheaval.
Not too long ago, the governor of the Reserve Bank stated that the economy was “deteriorating” fast. One South African economist warned that our economy was in “free fall”.
Inequality, high unemployment and poverty are registered as the main gigantic problems of South African society. The results of the 2011 census revealed that the average white household earns six times the income of the average black household. There is a vast structural disconnect within the national economy between the white community and the African community.
The proposals, which have come from the government and from our intellectual elite inside and outside the government, cannot solve this crisis because they work within the present structure of the economy; they merely want to improve how the present economy works, hoping that this will trickle down and solve the economic and social crisis.
The projected massive government investments in infrastructure development shall not eliminate the vast structural disconnect, just as the construction and operation of the Gautrain has not made a dent in solving the problem of inequality, high unemployment and poverty.
Capitalism produced not only the advanced industrial societies of the West and Japan, but also colonialism and underdeveloped countries. South Africa is a by-product of this twin process. To know how poverty, unemployment and inequality can be eliminated requires not only a correct knowledge of how the problem arose, but also of the economic history of the world.
Regarding the historical roots of our problem, it is not enough to refer to apartheid. It is simply an Afrikaner term for a policy and process that existed before 1948.
The roots of our problem lie in colonial conquest. Colonialism gave rise not only to a colonial state, but to a colonial economy and ideology. Here is a peculiar phenomenon: the death of the colonial state is survived by the colonial economy and the colonial ideology. The colonial state died in South Africa, but is survived by the colonial economy. Our economy bears the scars and shape of a colonial economy.
The representatives of England settled here together with a population from other parts of Europe, hence the designation “settler-colonial society”. The European population in this colony became the largest in Africa, giving rise to a strong emotional bond between this settler community and the West, which is untouchable.
This gave rise to two grossly unequal parts of South African society. One is black, forming the vast majority of society, a large part of which is in preindustrial rural areas. Africans became the primary labourers, and this vast sector is poor, with the worst facilities and infrastructure.
The other part is the white community, a tiny minority, which is by and large wealthy. It has the best facilities and industrial infrastructure and is linked with the industrial Western capitalist economy.
Colonialism and the slave
The underdevelopment of black rural communities, and of their offspring in urban areas, are pulling down the economy. It cannot develop any further as long as it contains this colony. In accounting terms, when conducting an audit of the national economy, the colony, comprising the vast majority of society, is simply entered in the loss column. The cost of the colony to the national economy is many times the value of the gross national product of the country.
The colony is now sapping and negating the vitality and growth potential of the national economy and society.
South African economists and statisticians often calculate and bewail the cost of a holiday to the national economy. The cost of the colony to the South African economy, the cost of unused capacity of tens of millions of black people, the cost of unused capacity of women, runs into trillions of rand: that is how big the South African economy can be if the colony were eliminated. That is the “potential economic surplus”, in Paul Baran’s terms.
We need a policy and plan to eliminate the colony within the South African economy, and develop one modern integrated economy. The next article proposes such a policy. Professor Herbert Vilakazi is an independent scholar and contributed this article in his personal capacity.