Sakeliga urges non-co-operation with proposed regulations

30 March 2022

Sakeliga urges businesses and business organisations to refrain from offering support to the state of disaster regulations proposed this week by COGTA minister Dlamini-Zuma. In the face of increasingly irrational and harmful government action, we urge a unilateral return to common sense.  

In the meantime, we are considering expanding our current litigation against the state of disaster and its regulations to account for the latest developments. 

Sakeliga rejects the latest regulations proposed under the state of disaster which now seek unlawfully to keep ineffective and unnecessary measures in place even after the (already unlawful) state of disaster is lifted. In promulgating the proposed regulations, the minister would be acting ultra vires – that is, outside the bounds set for her by law. She may not continue to wield powers granted under the state of disaster after the state of disaster has been lifted. 

The appropriate and lawful course of action for government is to completely abandon the state of disaster, along with all regulations made under it and all alternative regulations intended to replace it. 

Government’s continued insistence on prolonging its manifest policy disasters in the face of the latest employment data and when so many countries have withdrawn all Covid-19 regulations is revealing of how out of touch it is. The employment data shows that two million people are still unable to recover their jobs lost since the state of disaster was first declared and reckless lockdown restrictions implemented, while waves of new young entrants to the job market are unable to find work. 

We specifically discourage businesses and the public from co-operating with the divisive and unhelpful distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. There is no basis for government’s harmful and unscientific prescription that businesses should monitor people for proof of vaccination or of a 72-hour negative Covid19 test result at premises of some arbitrary capacity. We encourage businesses to see these regulations as bait, which if taken serves to maintain the perception of a disaster and lend the state insidious legitimacy for permanent interference in these and more matters of business and life in which it has no jurisdiction. 

Businesses should reject being used as enforcement arms for poor state policy. A government going down a destructive path such as this should know businesses oppose them, in the interests not only of repairing employment opportunities for millions of people ravaged by lockdown, but fundamentally to rebuild a flourishing economy and society devastated by decades of state incompetence and harmful policy. 

Issued by Piet le Roux, CEO, Sakeliga, 30 March 2022