DA leader, John Steenhuisen has demanded that all restrictions, including the State of Disaster itself, be lifted after President Cyril Ramaphosa failed to provide an update on the lockdown restrictions after the promised two week period.
With Covid-19 cases declining rapidly after the third wave of infections, Steenhuisen said that there is no longer any justification to keep restrictions in place, especially given the amount of time South Africans have had to get their vaccine.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Steenhuisen stated that there is “no justification – scientific or moral – to persist with (lockdown) measures”, and said that they currently “only harm the law-abiding and job-creating citizens who still abide by them out of a sense of patriotic duty and a respect for the Rule of Law”.
“COVID-19 cases are steadily decreasing across all nine provinces in the country, and every adult South African has by now had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. Our country’s vaccine supply is greater than our demand and we have sufficient operational vaccination sites countrywide. The time has surely now come to place the livelihoods of the majority ahead of protecting the health of those who choose not to take the vaccine,” said Steenhuisen.
Over two weeks ago when the country shifted into Adjusted Level 2 Lockdown, Ramaphosa said that the regulations would be reviewed in two weeks, a deadline that has since lapsed.
Steenhuisen claimed that when asked about the conditions that needed to be met in order for the State of Disaster and lockdown restrictions to be eased entirely, Ramaphosa was apparently vague in his response.
“His answer was entirely unsatisfactory, stating simply that only once ‘sustainable sectoral regulatory measures were in place’, could the State of Disaster be lifted. That is nothing but a deliberately open-ended deadline in order to extend, indefinitely, his government’s extraordinary, unconstitutional powers over our society,” said Steenhuisen.
Steenhuisen also claimed that the lockdown rules imposed by the ruling party are persistently ignored by their own members.
“Furthermore, as we saw this past weekend at both the ANC and EFF election rallies, the lockdown regulations only still exist for those South Africans who willingly obey rules and respect laws. The ANC rally in Tshwane, as well as the EFF’s rally in Johannesburg, flouted every single remaining lockdown regulation, from the 500 person limit to mask wearing and social distancing. Our global peers are pulling away from us at an alarming rate in their post-Covid economic recovery, but our own government seems more concerned with not relinquishing the extra power handed to it under the State of Disaster than allowing citizens and businesses to rescue us from economic collapse,” he said.
Sources: MSN, World News
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