Calls made for private sector acquisition, distribution of Covid-19 vaccine

AfriForum and trade union Solidarity have joined forces in calling on the private sector to acquire and distribute the Covid-19 vaccine themselves following their announcement of a “major legal breakthrough” on Tuesday.

“Solidarity is now calling on large employers, medical distributors, medical aid funds and other role players to start buying, distributing and administering vaccines on a large scale,” Solidarity’s chief operations officer Dirk Hermann said.

He said they were delighted that the continued pressure from both organisations had resulted in employers, medical funds and other private institutions being able to approach manufacturers for negotiations about acquiring the vaccine with confidence.

“This can be crucial in our fight against the virus.”

Hermann said they were calling on the private sector to acquire the vaccines.

“We are also calling suppliers thereof to provide them to a variety of buyers and not only the government so that there were more role-players in the market and also enable consumers to make a choice about which vaccine they wanted administered to them.

“We will not allow the government to appropriate that which does not belong to it,” he said.

The two organisations held a media briefing at AfriForum offices in Centurion where they announced that the government had, under oath in court documents, reportedly admitted that there were no legal restrictions pertaining to the private sector purchasing Covid-19 vaccines.

The reported revelation by government followed after the two organisations allegedly threatened legal action against it to declare any exclusion of the private sector from purchasing vaccines as unconstitutional.

Hermann said they wanted to ensure the private sector would also be afforded the opportunity to acquire and administer the vaccines.

“The state has a history of failure – the SAA has fallen, Eskom turned off our lights, municipalities are bankrupt and Denel cannot pay their employees’ salaries…

“The government does not have the ability to manage the vaccine process themselves. This includes the purchasing of vaccines,” he said, adding that the private sector should be involved in the full vaccine value chain.

“To ensure this, Solidarity and AfriForum approached the court to prevent nationalisation of the vaccine process.”

AfriForum’s strategy and content campaign officer Ernst van Zyl said that they had intimated the court application in a bid to get a response from the government after it allegedly failed to be transparent and respond to their inquiries about the acquisition of the vaccine.

“AfriForum and Solidarity had to launch a court application to finally get a response from government, whereas a simple response to our initial letter would have cost the government almost no time at all.

“There appears to be a deliberate attempt at obfuscation by the government regarding the matter which leads us to why this lack of transparency,” Van Zyl said.

“We will be taking legal action for the government to answer pertinent questions about an urgent matter which could save lives allegedly showed how little value it [the government] attached to transparency.

“This case once again proved how vital watchdogs of civil society are in the ongoing battle to protect human rights in South Africa.”

In an answering affidavit, seen by Rekord, on behalf of president Cyril Ramaphosa and health minister Zweli Mkhize, the national health department’s director-general Sabelo Siyabonga Sandile Buthelezi indicated there was currently no realistic way in which private persons or provincial health departments could procure the vaccine themselves.

“This is for practical reasons unrelated to the Covid-19 response presentation and government strategy,” he said.

Buthelezi also indicated that there was no evidence in their founding papers that any single private person or entity had sought to procure, distribute and administer the Covid-19 vaccines.

The two organisations appeared constrained to the fact that no person would be able to procure the vaccine and distribute it in the country as it had not been approved by the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority.

“The Covid-19 response presentation plainly does not contain any legal prohibition on private parties procuring the Covid-19 vaccines,” Buthelezi said.

“The ambivalent suggestions by the two organisations were too artificial and contrived apparently in an attempt to generate a purported dispute so that they could approach this court.”

Buthelezi said that the government and its officials were yet to determine whether or not such a legal prohibition to the acquisition and distribution to the vaccine would be necessary as there was presently no possibility of any private person or institution procuring the vaccines themselves.

“If such a practical possibility were to eventuate, government would have to give careful and close scrutiny to the question of whether to impose such a legal prohibition and, if so, in what form and subject to what conditions.

“This is because the idea of a free-for-all whereby private persons and institutions can themselves procure Covid-19 vaccines outside the government programme raises very real concerns and risks for the lives and health of South Africans,” Buthelezi said.

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