End State Disaster, Mr President

PRESIDENT Ramaphosa’s government must allow the State of Disaster to lapse on Saturday, the day it needs to be renewed if it is to remain in place.

The State of Disaster is no longer necessary for managing the virus. On the contrary, it is doing South Africa more harm than good by undermining our social, economic, and democratic recovery. South Africa needs certainty. Investors need it, tourists need it, teachers need it, schoolchildren need it. Schoolchildren need to go to school full time. Not a couple of days a week.

People need to know they can invest in businesses large or small, without the rules of the game suddenly changing. Without investment, there will be no job creation and no sustainable poverty alleviation.

The National Coronavirus Command Council is profoundly undemocratic. There is great risk to our democracy in a small group of individuals taking decisions on all our behalf, without parliamentary oversight and other democratic checks on power.

The State of Disaster has become no more than a cover for increasing centralised control and evading accountability. It must go.

The purpose of the State of Disaster and associated restrictions is to relieve pressure on the health system.covid-19 hospitalisation rates are now low across the country, immunity rates (from vaccines or prior to infection) are high across the population, the Omicron variant has been shown to be less severe, excess deaths have been mostly normal since September, and the health system has had ample time to prepare in the unlikely event of a new variant that evades immunity.

Furthermore, those in the high-risk group have had ample opportunity to opt for personal protection, with vaccines shown to be extremely effective at protecting against severe disease and death.

So, the State of Disaster can no longer be justified on these grounds.

Nor can it be justified with the argument that it should be kept in case of possible future variants or waves.

This is like saying we should keep the State of Disaster in case of possible future earthquakes. South Africa has now been under a State of Disaster for 667 days.

For far too long now the government has relied on the State of Disaster, instead of doing its job which is to improve the health-care system and get vaccines and boosters to as many individuals as possible in the high-risk group.

The DA is appealing the dismissal by the high court to have the Disaster Management Act declared unconstitutional.

Even laws governing a State of Emergency provide for democratic oversight. It therefore cannot possibly be constitutional for a government to use the Disaster Management Act to bypass democratic institutions indefinitely.