After Cabinet announced that the national state of disaster, a state that South Africa has been in for 22 months now, is set to continue indefinitely, an overarching question for our country surfaced – what now?
Since March 2020, when the pandemic reached a critical status, South Africans have been under the leadership of the state of disaster regulation. It’s the regulation that allows hard lockdowns to come and go as the government sees fit, as well as a whole cesspool of sub-regulation that have impacted our civil liberties in a multitude of ways. The government decided what goods were essential, when we could go outside to play and when we would stay in.
It has been for many South Africans and especially the youth, the first time of seeing the extent of tangible control a government can have over the smallest and private parts of a person’s life, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Ashleigh Nefdt.
The announcement of the national state of disaster continuing didn’t come as a surprise for many – given the Omicron variants chokehold over our country. Further, as seen last December, COVID-19 loves the festive season as much as we do.
In an effort to keep things in order (as much as possible) and mitigate the fourth wave spiralling further out of control, the National Coronavirus Command Council suggested keeping the state of disaster in place, in a plight coupled with an urgency for people to get vaccinated during this time.
“COVID-19 does not take a holiday,” Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele warned members of the media as per Daily Maverick.
What does the extension of the regulation mean for our country?
Essentially, the extension that will be formally gazetted sometime in the coming week as BusinessTech notes, means that the protocols under the regulation are still at play. This means that lockdowns can still happen at their various levels, and with them, various sub-restrictions. The family meetings we have all come to know and anticipate may not be quite done with us yet.
“We don’t want those lockdowns to come, but we cannot say they will never come,” said Gungubele.
Does it impact mandatory vaccine regulations?
The state of disaster does impact vaccine regulations, as the Disaster Management Act facilitates coordination, mitigation and recovery following a disaster. However, a mandatory vaccination setting has not yet been established.
On this thread, Gungubele expressed “It’s clear to a number of us that we need a policy that encourages vaccination, and we need a policy that discourages cynicism towards vaccines…no recommendations were tabled,” Gungubele noted.
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Picture: Swiss Educational College
