Court lifts lid on SA’s State of Disaster decisions

FOR the first time since the declaration of the National State of Disaster for Covid19 in March 2020, the veil of secrecy over the government’s decision-making processes regarding disaster management regulations will be lifted.

This is owing to Sakeliga’s court victory this month, against Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma. It concludes a two-year litigation battle.

The minister had to deliver the records Sakeliga requested in 2020, its CEO Piet le Roux said. The records relate to the decision-making processes followed in 2020 to place the country under lockdown, and its subsequent extensions.

“These lockdowns and other measures did unprecedented harm to economic and social activity.

“The public will now be able to see for what apparent reasons Dlamini Zuma and her department imposed police state conditions on the public to ensure people stayed in their homes, schools and universities remained closed, churches could not congregate, and businesses remained shut.”

Le Roux expressed the hope that the public would use the records as an “impetus and grounding” to hold the government to account for the harmful decisions and to prevent such egregious abuses of power re-occurring.

Under the terms of the court order, Dlamini Zuma must, by December 9, deliver an array of records of decisionmaking on Covid lockdown decisions.

These include all records, reasons, reports, findings, deliberations, communications, memoranda and/or further documentation relied upon by the minister when she repeatedly exercised far-reaching powers under the Disaster Management Act to keep the country in the grip of erratic lockdown measures.

“It is, of course, possible Dlamini Zuma will claim that, in large part, the records to be provided in terms of the court order do not exist. Such a reaction would confirm suspicions that improper and arbitrary decision-making processes were followed in making Covid regulations.”