Latest national state of disaster extension “harmful”

The institute’s remarks come just days after a government gazette signed by cooperative governance and traditional affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma announced that the national state of disaster would be extended to December 15.

According to the gazette, “the extension took into account the need to continue augmenting the existing legislation and contingency arrangements undertaken by the organs of state to address the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disaster”.

However, the IRR’s head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse said: “To call this a state of disaster is absurd and only deepens disaster-fatigue, meaning that if extraordinary measures are required in the future, people will be less likely to take it seriously, as the boy who cried wolf knows, but Dlamini-Zuma does not”.

He explained that, for the past month, Covid-related deaths were reportedly 10 times less than what they were during the second wave, averaging 0,6 deaths per day per million people.

This, he said, was in contrast to the six plus deaths per day per million people recorded during the second wave of the pandemic.

“South Africa currently has the lowest Covid death and case numbers on record since the peak of the first wave,” Crouse said.

Crouse said the information, against the backdrop of critical Covid-19 threats in the past, showed that extending the state of disaster was not compatible with the current situation in the country.

“Indeed, Stats SA data shows that overall deaths – not due to Covid – in the last month are currently two orders of magnitude greater than Covid-19 deaths. Attention to these deaths on the part of national legislators is being sidelined by the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) and other disaster deviation from constitutional normalcy,” he said.

Crouse further said that the extension of the national state of disaster was reportedly art of a bigger trend of abuse of power by the ministry.

“This abuse was earlier demonstrated in August 2021 when Dlamini-Zuma attempted to force the postponement of the national municipal elections.

“The Constitutional Court vindicated the IRR’s observation that her proclamation was irrational,” he said.

“The extension of the national state of disaster entrenches the command council above and outside structures of parliamentary oversight, normalising the idea of South Africa’s people being governed by an inscrutable command council.”

Meanwhile, the IRR said its attorneys had written to the presidency last week to ask whether or not the NCCC fulfilled the basic requirements of professional conduct, including keeping an attendance record and minutes of meetings along with whether or not decisions had been formally voted on.

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