Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>South Africa's disaster management system exhibits a paradox of implementation: over two decades of disaster management legislative mandate have not produced functional integration. Nine Provincial Disaster Management Centres operate non-interoperable data systems, producing "implementation theatre" in which policy compliance masks systemic fragmentation. A PRISMA scoping review of 26 peer-reviewed studies reveals that while AI and IoT offer superior predictive accuracy, deployment is blocked by a cascading failure chain: infrastructure deficits enable capacity gaps, which enable governance failures. Successful pilots, such as the Western Cape's Flood Risk Intelligence System (NSE 0.88) and eThekwini's WhatsApp alert network (reducing evacuation times from 6 hours to under 2), demonstrate that efficacy depends on institutional buy-in rather than technological merit alone. The study identifies governance architecture as the primary barrier to national scaling and proposes a sequenced four-priority framework: mandatory data-exchange governance; human capacity development; cloud-first infrastructure modernisation; and national operational integration.</p>