Bad hair day for lawyer challenging lockdown rules

An advocate who went to court to highlight the plight of hairdressers should have combed through the roots of lockdown regulations more thoroughly, a judge said yesterday.

Cape Town high court judge Lee Bozalek said Carlo Viljoen aimed his legal hairdryer at health minister Zweli Mkhize, when in fact the custodian of lockdown regulations was cooperative governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

“The [health] minister simply does not have the power or authority to compel the minister of co-operative governance to change the regulations pertaining to the industry,” Bozalek said, dismissing Viljoen’s application.

This meant the application was fatally flawed.

But Bozalek said it had raised questions about the wholesale suspension of sectors such as hairdressing.

The judge suggested mediation between the sector and the government so that salons could open under certain conditions.

Viljoen said he decided to fight for hairdressers after his wife opted to cut her own hair, followed by his.

At that point he realised that hairdressers were struggling to put food on the table.

Though he did not have support from the Employers Organisation for Hairdressing, Cosmetology and Beauty (EOHCB), which it appeared from court arguments would rather negotiate with the government about a way to restart operations, Viljoen told Bozalek on Wednesday he had received supportive e-mails from hundreds of hairdressers.

He also cited more than 400 messages sent to an industry support group from hairdressers, many of them single mothers, pleading for food relief.

Mkhize’s advocate, Adiel Nacerodien, argued that Viljoen may not have been motivated entirely by philanthropy because he had solicited donations for a charity he was part of.

But Viljoen said the R10,000 received was in the charity’s bank account and he had not touched a cent.