Court squashes Minister Zulu’s latest food distribution restrictions

24 June 2020

Note to editors: Please find yesterday's court order attached. 

The Western Cape High Court yesterday granted a Democratic Alliance (DA) bid to stop the latest food relief regulations put forward by Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu. This is the second set of regulations put forward by the Minister and the second time the DA has won against her in court.

The judgment stops the regulations from being implemented, says she has to give the DA three days' notice if she wants to bring any new food distribution regulations and awards costs to the DA.

The latest regulations were published last Thursday and sought to set up a complicated system of planning and reporting that would need to be complied with by all NGOs and food relief charities before they operated soup kitchens or distributed food parcels.

They had the potential of blocking food relief as organisations became mired in bureaucratic processes.

When police and social development officials began implementing the first set of distribution restrictions, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people were stopped from getting food as Minister Zulu sought to centralise distribution.

This will have caused, hunger and malnutrition and Zulu deserves censure for actively harming the lives of South Africans.

Despite admitting she did not expect the damaging effects of the lockdown on poor people, Zulu still went ahead with her new regulations.

She may believe her Department of Social Development is a super-efficient organisation that has plenty of spare capacity to start a process that will control all food distribution. This is not likely as the department struggles to perform its core functions.

The alternative, and more likely explanation, is that she wants to control food distribution so that she can exchange food for promises of political loyalty.

Either way, she has been shown to care nothing for the lives of vulnerable South Africans.

This should disqualify her from public office.

If President Ramaphosa had an iota of conscience, he would fire her from his cabinet immediately.

The DA is grateful that her destructive, idiotic plans have been stopped and that all South Africans can go ahead and feed their neighbours in need, without government interference.

Issued byJames Lorimer,Member of the DA Shadow Cabinet, 24 June 2020