The Constitutional Court is this week expected to deliver its judgment on the application by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to postpone the local government elections.
An inquiry, headed by retired deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke, recommended that the municipal elections be postponed to February 2022, mainly due to health risks posed by Covid-19 and the restrictions placed on political gatherings.
The municipal elections were initially scheduled for October 27 2021 in line with a constitutional five-year limit placed on the tenure of municipal councils.
The apex court will make its ruling as the governing ANC has applied to the electoral court to reopen the registration of candidates after failing to meet last week’s deadline to submit a list of all its candidates for the municipal elections. The party claims that it experienced technical glitches with the IEC’s registration system. The DA and COPE have said they will oppose the ANC’s application.
On Monday, a former deputy president of SA and executive director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, will address a webinar on Women’s Month hosted by the Government Communication and Information System and Brand SA, among others, which will focus on informing and empowering women and enhancing gender equality.
On Tuesday, Eskom, which has been dogged by load-shedding and a number of mismanagement and corruption scandals over the years linked to state capture, will announce its financial results for the year ended March 2021. The power utility has reduced its mountain of debt to below R400bn from a previous high of R480bn.
Parliament will be a hive of activity this week. In the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday the select committee on health and social services will receive a briefing from the department of social development on the auditor-general’s findings on expenditure of the Covid-19 relief fund package.
The R500bn social and economic relief package for SA was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in April 2020 to cushion the economy against the effects of the coronavirus.
One of the fund’s main pillars was the Covid-19 Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters), aimed at assisting those in formal employment expected to lose their income during the lockdown.
However, a probe into Ters by the late auditor-general Kimi Makwetu late last year uncovered alleged fraud and irregularities in the system, including overpayments of more than R84m to 1,183 applicants and underpayments of R251m to 1,700 applicants, along with the invalid rejection of beneficiaries, fraud and double-dipping.
Other problems included payments to people below the legal age of employment and those who were deceased, working for the government or in prison.
The Ters scheme made payments to about 267,000 employers and 5.4-million employees at a cost of R58.7bn between April 2020 and March 2021. In October and November 2020 the cost of the Ters benefit to the Unemployment Insurance Fund was averaging about R2bn a month.
In the National Assembly on Wednesday, the portfolio committee on health will be briefed by the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) on Covid-19 vaccine licensing, vaccine efficacy rates and the latest vaccine research. Covid-19 has infected more than 2.7-million people in SA, with more than 81,000 succumbing to it. Vaccines have been administered to nearly 12-million people.
Also happening in the National Assembly on Wednesday will be a roundtable discussion by the portfolio committee on communications with social media entities on “misinformation and content moderation practices ahead of local government elections”.
On Friday Ramaphosa will answer questions in the National Assembly from MPs on a range of topics, including a question by DA leader John Steenhuisen on the criteria he uses to appoint ministers to cabinet. Other questions relate to mandatory vaccination, economic recovery and the Marikana massacre.
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