Disaster Management Act requires urgent attention, says OUTA
The organisation said that whilst general consensus is that government leadership started out on the right track with the initial lockdown decision in March, much of the trust in government’s ability to manage and keep society on board is fast being eroded.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has released a statement on government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its implementation of the Disaster Management Act.
The statement pointed out that the crisis faced in South Africa today in both curbing the Covid-19 pandemic as well as reducing the economic fallout, is being made worse by growing civil dissension and a lack of trust in government. OUTA believes this is partly due to a flawed Disaster Management Act (DMA) void of mechanisms to question or hold government to account when exercising its emergency powers.
OUTA said it is mindful that government’s efforts to contain the pandemic must be paramount in the disaster management actions taken, ensuring ultimately that human suffering and death is minimised. Equally important, it added, is the curtailment of an economic meltdown that will have an extremely devastating impact on everyone’s lives in one form or another.
Eight weeks into lockdown, citizen angst and frustration – driven by uncertainty, the lack of clarity and leadership accountability – is fast becoming a new dimension in the current crisis that South Africa can ill afford, – OUTA
The organisation said that whilst general consensus is that government leadership started out on the right track with the initial lockdown decision in March, much of the trust in government’s ability to manage and keep society on board is fast being eroded. OUTA believes this is due to a lack of transparency by government leadership on what informs their decision making, combined with the inability of the national assembly and society to question or hold government to account – especially when government decisions and actions appear to be irrational or where they infringe on constitutional rights.
OUTA said its legal advisors have studied Section 27 of the DMA, and its assessment reveals that it does not pass constitutional scrutiny. The DMA as it stands, concluded the assessment, provides the minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) with unfettered powers and allows the minister more power than the constitution allows the president in a state of emergency. Furthermore, it affords the minister extensive legislative and other powers without any oversight by parliament.
We believe that these unfettered powers and the lack of scrutiny or oversight by parliament has given rise to society’s inability to understand the rationale for government’s decisions on, for example, the various levels of lockdown, the containment of business activities and the curtailing of citizen activities. Basic human rights are being infringed, something that must be open to scrutiny in a democratic society, – Stefanie Fick, OUTA’s Executive Director for Accountability.
Initially, the president announced a 21-day lockdown because of the declaration of a national disaster. Had parliament been involved in the process after those 21 days, this would have substantially mitigated OUTA’s concerns. But the lockdown has since been extended, initially for another 14 days and now indefinitely. It accordingly appears, according to OUTA, almost certain that the minister can and will continue to use her unfettered power to unilaterally extend the declaration, and there is nothing in current law that stops her from doing so.
OUTA has written to the speaker of parliament and the president to urgently convene parliament to consider appropriate amendments to the DMA. In the interim, the organisation calls upon parliament to demand that the minister account to it. Parliament, it said, should be convened urgently to debate the regulations and directives that have been issued and the minister should be required to account to parliament and publicly answer questions posed by members of parliament.
It is imperative for the legislative arm of government to amend the DMA to ensure the same level of oversight and checks and balances afforded as would be the case when a state of emergency is declared, – OUTA
“We trust that our president and the members of parliament will agree with the need to address and remedy this gaping void in the DMA. We would also like to emphasise that our request or actions contemplated should in no way be construed as trying to usurp or detract from the necessary work required by government to contain Covid-19 and to keep our economy from collapsing,” added the statement.
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