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A SWOT analysis is a form of analysis that assesses the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses taking into account to the opportunities and threats brought by the

SWOT analysis is an analytical tool used to weigh the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an on-going or completed project within an organisation. Through SWOT analysis organisations can sustain its strengths, mitigate its weaknesses, avoid threats and grab the opportunities available to maintain the organisation’s competitiveness (Nadizadeh, Zadeh and Sahraeian, 2011).

The analysis involves individual explanation of the acronym of the word SWOT in which S, stand for ‘strength’, W, for stand ‘weakness’, O, for ‘opportunities’ and T, stands for ‘threats. The SWOT analysis was used in the study to find out the level of impacts of public participation and co-operative governance on disaster risk management in the City of Cape Town.

4.8.1 Strengths

During the interviews, the researcher found out that the surrounding communities in the City of Cape Town can easily get mobilised against poor service delivery protests. With proper organisation, the same community approach could be used to organise community members to manage disaster risks available in the surrounding areas of the metro city. The City of Cape Town MDMC has one of the largest staff complement in the local municipality87. The centre can utilise this large staff through coming up with a strategy by rotating the staff on weekly basis in all the hotspots communities conducting risk- avoidance community sessions. The proposed re-allocation of the MDMC to the office of the City Manager seems to have the capacity to address the poor co-operative governance within the metro if properly implemented. Such a proposal as reported by some of the disaster officials promises to give more authority to the MDMC than at present88.

       87  Interview with the MDMC Head  88  Interview with disaster officials         

4.8.2 Weakness

The fact that the MDMC has no legal power to enforce line functions to comply with disaster risk reduction and prevention processes means that there is a lack of an overall body to oversee, monitor and evaluate the state of line functions’ preparedness, or the compliance by the line functions to disaster risk management. As such, line functions are not held accountable in the case where a disaster strikes a community. Therefore, there is a lack of monitoring and evaluation mechanism in the City of Cape Town with regards to disaster risk management. The fact that line functions do not report disaster risk management activities directly to the MDMC means that there are no reporting mechanisms available. Thus, the MDMC have no any mandate to question line functions’ lack of compliance to disaster risk management activities as per the following interview remarks:

“We only provide advice, recommendations to line functions. The problem is that the law does not give us (MDMC) any mandate to make some follow-ups as to whether or not there is any action being taken following our disaster advice and recommendations given. In89”.

4.8.3 Opportunities

The fact that disaster risk management in South Africa is a responsibility of a line functional responsibility presents more opportunities to the respective line functions to act on disaster risks that are within their functional areas. Thus, line function can easily concentrate on the risks relevant to their departmental obligation. Therefore, line functions have an ample time to deal with risks in a comprehensive manner. Hence, line functions do not have many risks to deal with.

4.8.4 Threats

The lack of compliance by line functions presents a great concern as the City of Cape Town strives to make communities in the city ‘disaster-free’. The increasing numbers of people building on water-logged areas can result into the number of disaster related incidents to the rise.

4.9 Chapter Summary

The chapter has shown that co-operative governance in disaster risk management is important as it services other sectors. With disaster risk management being multi- dimensional and multi-sectoral, this means that disaster affects a number of sectors. As such line government function alone cannot effectively reduce, prevent or mitigate the severity of the consequences of disasters. Only when line functions work together for the common good of the community, an added group capacity is able to achieve more in terms of risk reduction, prevention, preparedness and at worst mitigate the effects of a disaster than can one do. The modern world has seen a lot of changes in the way organizations, government department operates. There has been increasing advocacy for public participation in community developments. The same public participation is also encouraged before, during and after disasters as discussed in this study. It is believed that people who participate in the development of a project can do the same when that development is under risk of being destroyed by a disaster (Meshack, 2004). The good thing about public participation is that during public participation members of the local community get equipped with various skills. Therefore, if public participation becomes a community culture it can help in dealing with disaster risks before outside interventions. Thus, government reliefs during times of disasters just supplement the communities’ efforts. Therefore, the UN ISDRR’s strategy to launch a campaign for the bottom-up disaster approach was a step closer to making local community take full responsibility in risk reduction and prevention. The focus to increase public involvement through meaningful participation from the local community level was worthwhile (Scott and Tarazona, 2011). The next chapter provides the concluding remarks of the study with regards to the objectives covered. The implications and then possible recommendations to the study are also covered in the last chapter. The chapter ends with a conclusion that summarises the study.

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