Two years ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster, barely a fortnight after the first Covid-19 cases were identified in SA. In a rare show of decisiveness, the government used the provisions of the Disaster Act to institute stringent lockdown restrictions, including confining people to their homes, closing schools and shuttering large parts of the economy.
Since then the government has repeatedly fumbled its response to the pandemic. It dithered and delayed on vaccine procurement, continued to maintain the theatre of surface and hand sanitising long after scientists concluded transmission of the virus was airborne, and has maintained the state of disaster beyond its sell by date, even if the unpredictable nature of the pandemic and potential for new variants initially justified a cautious approach.
The state of disaster was never meant to last forever. It is mind boggling that technocrats did not start planning an alternative legislative framework for managing the pandemic months ago, one that did not rely on lockdown regulations by decree. Unlike most regulatory changes instituted in SA, the rules brought into effect in terms of the Disaster Act have not been subject to public consultation or parliamentary oversight.
The handful of men and women who constitute Ramaphosa’s cabinet have thus wielded astonishingly wide powers, accountable only to each other. While that may be acceptable in a genuine crisis, it cannot be justified in perpetuity.
Opposition parties, civil rights groups, scientists and legal experts have rightly challenged the rationale for maintaining the state of disaster. The regulations, which have been tightened and loosened as infections waxed and waned, have become irrelevant as the pandemic progresses.
SA has endured four successive waves of infection, and a well-established vaccination programme that has fully inoculated 43% of the adult population, and reached close to 70% of those aged 60 and above, the group most at risk. The net result is a population with a high level of natural and vaccine-induced immunity that emerged unscathed from the latest omicron-driven wave.
Despite ripping through the population in December, omicron did not exact as severe a toll as feared. For the first time since the pandemic hit SA, surging cases were not followed by a devastating spike in hospital admissions and deaths, and the nation’s health system was not stretched to breaking point. Local scientists say they expect a fifth wave in late April or early May, but that another catastrophic surge is unlikely unless a new super-variant emerges that is both more transmissible than omicron, and able to avoid the immunity provided by prior infection and vaccines.
It is therefore astonishing that in seeking to end its reliance on the state of disaster for managing the pandemic, the government has shoehorned its outdated lockdown framework into health legislation. Leaving aside that the health regulations released for public comment earlier this week are a typo-ridden muddle, the more disturbing fact is the government has simply shifted responsibility for lockdown rules from cabinet to a single minister.
As things stand, these regulations give the health minister astonishingly wide-ranging powers, appear to have taken no account of the emerging science about Covid-19, and repeat some of the absurdities of the regulations brought to bear in terms of the Disaster Act. For instance, they give the health minister the power to cap the size of funerals at 100 people, but are silent on weddings and other religious services. Similarly, large shopping malls may have thousands of visitors milling about indoors, but outdoor sporting events are limited to 2,000.
Around the world, countries are recalibrating their response to the pandemic. It is time for SA to do that. The government needs to lift the state of disaster now, safe in the knowledge it can reinstate it should the worst-case scenario unfold and a horrific fifth wave batter the country.
Instead of bowing to political pressure and rushing through health regulations that are not fit for purpose to avoid yet another extension of the state of disaster, which expires on April 15, the government needs to craft a proper framework that will protect the nation in the face of the next pandemic.
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