DA to ask the CIPC to review the business rescue process at SAA

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) requesting that it reviews the fiduciary validity of the business rescue process at South African Airways (SAA), in terms of Chapter 6 of the Companies Act 2008 (Act 71 of 2008).

The letter that SAA’s Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) sent to creditors yesterday all but confirms that the business rescue process at SAA has become politically contaminated and cannot be allowed to continue.

SAA’s BRPs have succumbed to political pressure from the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and are now making decisions based on the Minister’s inane and vain desire for a new state funded airline.

In a 360 degree turn from their previous position that the airline should be liquidated, the BRPs are now of the view that:
“…there is still a reasonable prospect of rescuing SAA, subject to the receipt of unequivocal commitment thereto and the requisite funding, and that will be set out in the business rescue plan to be published in due course.”

This change in course follows a spirited political campaign by Gordhan to discredit the business rescue process and resurrect the folly of failure by calling for the establishment of a new state airline. That the BRPs are now singing from the same hymn book as Gordhan clearly shows that the minister has hijacked the process.

Even more alarming is the request by the BRPs for new funding to facilitate their salvage process, this despite postponing the publication of a business rescue plan for SAA twice.

Political interference in a business rescue process goes against the letter and spirit of the Companies Act. The CIPC has an obligation to ensure that a bad precedent on business rescue is not set with SAA, failure to which there could be far reaching long-term consequences for prudent corporate governance in South Africa.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Opinion | While commentators hurl childish insults, the DA fights to protect the future of their children

The Financial Mail last week ran no less than three simultaneous attack pieces against the DA. The articles by Justice Malala, Chris Roper, and Paul Ash were apparently supposed to critique the party’s role during the lockdown crisis. While reasoned criticism is always necessary, the three gentlemen unfortunately could not let the opportunity slide to indulge in some good old-fashioned DA-bashing – the national sport of armchair critics everywhere who remain, for now, cosily insulated from the lockdown’s true effects.

Any honest assessment of the DA’s role during this crisis would obviously start with the most basic fact – which has gone almost entirely unacknowledged by the armchair commentariat – that the DA is the only political party that foresaw, and pushed back against, the collapse that would follow in the wake of an extended hard lockdown.

On 9 April, only two weeks after the lockdown started, the DA warned that extending the hard lockdown beyond the initial three-week deadline would “create an economic disaster.” The party was roundly lambasted in the media for sounding this timely warning when Malala was still tweeting “Amandla!” about the government’s conduct during the lockdown, and Roper was merrily mocking any criticism of the government’s ban on the sale of cooked food.

Of course, we now know that the DA was entirely correct to warn that the authoritarian instincts revealed by the hot food ban was merely the precursor to things like the subsequent ban on eCommerce, feeding the hungry, exercising during the day, or buying t-shirts and open-toed shoes, as well as the wave of murderous brutality meted out by security forces to innocent civilians like Collins Khosa.

Amandla? Not quite.

What has also become patently clear during the nearly six weeks that have passed since the hard lockdown was initially supposed to end, is that it has indeed precipitated a needless ANC-created “economic disaster.”

When the DA initially fought for a Smart Lockdown because the party feared that the government had no plan in place to quickly end the hard lockdown by rapidly ramping up testing and healthcare capacity, the warning was shouted down by commentators too busy doodling superhero cartoons of Cyril Ramaphosa.

When the DA warned that brutalising citizens will hasten rather than slow the spread of the virus, and that our incapable state has no ability to support the millions of livelihoods that would be devastated because of the brutal lockdown, commentators who happily continued to receive their salaries dismissed the thought, instead pondering the fate of Carole Baskin.

And more recently, when the DA launched a raft of court cases against the ANC lockdown crisis out of deep concern for the potentially irreparable damage being done both to civil liberties and to the very economic viability of our country, the likes of Roper dismissed it as part of supposed “petty politicking.”

While these three commentators may refuse to speak for them, the facts fortunately do speak for themselves. Just about two months into hard lockdown, we can now see on the horizon the first glimpses of the true cost that will come from childishly dismissing the DA’s warnings.

Between 3 and 7 million people will lose their jobs as a result of the extended hard lockdown, likely pushing South Africa’s unemployment rate above 50%. ANC apparatchiks are openly discussing their desire for the “National Command Council” to permanently run the country, while also permanently banning the sale of certain products – presumably to prolong the flow of billons into the illicit tobacco trade. And anyone who still thinks that the likes of Bheki Cele, Lindiwe Zulu and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will easily surrender the total power they have now grown accustomed to, is downright delusional.

Meanwhile, it becomes clearer by the day that, unlike in almost all other countries that implemented some version of a lockdown, South Africa’s coronavirus caseload is rapidly increasing even after almost two months of hard lockdown. This pattern is consistent with the warning that the irrational, brutal and unworkable hard lockdown will only serve to undermine public trust and compliance, fuelling the spread of the virus.

This is the reality of what lies ahead as a result of the refusal to honestly engage with the substance of the DA’s warnings: a devastating socio-economic collapse, a continuous assault on civil liberties, and a spike in the number of coronavirus cases.

Just imagine how different things could have been if more people had joined the fight against the devastation of the lockdown crisis with the same vigour that the likes of Malala, Roper and Ash demonstrate during their obsessive and childish tirades against the DA.

But hey, at least they can all proudly tell their children one day that they hurled kindergarten insults at John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille while South Africa crumbled around them.

In fact, aside from ignoring even the most basic facts about the DA’s fight to save lives and livelihoods from the lockdown crisis, the second striking aspect of the FM’s tripartite attack on the DA is precisely that they all seemed so endlessly obsessed with the personalities of the DA’s leaders.

Rather than judging the DA’s contribution on the basis of the actions taken by the party under their leadership, including the early fight for a Smart Lockdown, the efforts to keep the public informed during the innovative Coronacast broadcasts, the various court actions, and the victory against the ban on feeding the hungry, all three authors revealed a rather peculiar personal obsession with Steenhuisen and Zille.

Ash’s piece, for example, is nothing but an insult-laced diatribe against Steenhuisen’s interview with the SABC’s Flo Letoaba, who outrageously suggested that the leader of the opposition in a constitutional democracy does not have a legitimate right to criticise the ANC lockdown crisis. Nothing demonstrates the arrogance of this particular armchair critic more than his dismissal of Steenhuisen’s criticism of the military curfew, the ban on eCommerce, and the irrational restriction of the exercise window to three hours per day with the word: “Sob.”

One wonders if Ash would be quite so arrogantly dismissive if it was his child who was assaulted by the military for breaking the curfew, if his business went under because of the eCommerce ban, or if his family got a criminal record for walking on the beach. He would do well to take a look at some of the horror stories shared under the Twitter hashtag #JohnSpeaksForMe, where over 30 000 people voiced their support for the DA’s fight to protect lives and livelihoods from the ANC lockdown crisis.

Not to be outdone however, Malala added to the FM’s facile-fest with an outright hit piece on Zille, topped off with a few oh-so-satisfying little jabs at Steenhuisen. The gist of Malala’s rant is that Zille came out of retirement “to oust” the former leader and run the party.

Here too, facts are sacrificed in the name of a juicy bit of DA-bashing. Even a cursory glance at her history would reveal that Zille worked tirelessly to help grow a coterie of young leaders within the party and, when the time came, duly stepped aside as party leader.

But alarmed by the damning findings of a review report commissioned by the former leader into the 2019 election, Zille exercised her democratic right to run for the position of federal council chair. It is an election that she won not because of some grand conspiracy, but because the members of the DA wanted the person who had run a united party, who had managed a seven-party coalition in Cape Town, and who had turned the Western Cape into the best-run administration in South Africa, to bring administrative stability to the party. If he were interested in the truth, Malala would also have realised that it is within this capacity that Zille now oversees the various legal actions against the lockdown crisis.

Finally, Roper indulged in the best of both worlds by throwing an outright tantrum about both Steenhuisen and Zille. Like a toddler who just discovered that he can reach all the way inside his own diaper, Roper flung every last bit of excrement he could get hold of at his blue bogeyman.

First, he breathlessly complains that Steenhuisen dared to conduct a frank interview on the Coronacast broadcast with medical practitioners who hold dissenting views on the hard lockdown. Then he falls flat on his face trying to poke fun at the fact that the DA’s website was overwhelmed by the sheer number of donations from members of the public who want to help fund legal action against the lockdown crisis. And when this doesn’t quite stick, Roper flings a handful of race-bait, saying that “the DA made sure that all five participants [on Coronacast] were white.”

From here, his meltdown becomes nearly impossible to follow, as Roper first concedes that the DA’s “court action is something we can probably all agree would be a good thing,” but then asks “why reduce it to roast chicken and t-shirts” – only a few short sentences after he himself reduced the court action to roast chicken and t-shirts. It all culminates with Roper becoming the latest in a long list of commentators to gleefully predict, on the basis of his own conjecture, that “the DA’s slide into irrelevance will continue.” Sob.

Among the many underlying truths revealed by the lockdown crisis is that many commentators steadfastly refuse to engage with the DA in a forthright way. This remains the case even when the basic facts bear out that the DA is the only party that has consistently fought to protect civil liberties and uphold the Constitution, and to protect lives and livelihoods from both the coronavirus and the lockdown crisis.

While Malala, Roper and Ash continue to hurl their childish wisecracks at the DA, we will continue to do our utmost best to ensure that, when this is all over, there will be a constitutional democracy and an economic future left for their children.

DA welcomes the appointment of Mr Abel Sithole as the new PIC CEO

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the appointment of Mr Abel Sithole as the new Public Investment Corporation CEO. Mr Sithole’s extensive experience, spanning insurance and retirement fund industries, will prove invaluable in efforts to stabilise the PIC and ensure a return of sound corporate governance.

Mr Sithole already has urgent issues to attend to on his first day at work. The first and most urgent task will be to implement the recommendations of the Mphati Commission into the affairs of the Commission. 

One of the Commission’s recommendations was that the report be forwarded to the NPA and all relevant authorities so that necessary steps can be taken against those who were found to have acted inappropiately.

Without delay, Mr Sithole needs to launch a full-scale review of all existing deals between the PIC and Sekunjalo Investment Holdings in order to recoup any money that was invested in Sekunjalo companies. The Commission Report painted a scathing picture of the unholy alliance between Survé’s Sekunjalo Holdings and the former PIC CEO, Dan Matjila. 

More importantly, Mr Sithole’s performance will be measured by how well he protects the PIC from the ANC government’s repeated attempts to raid the fund and subsidise its poor handling of the economy.

The DA stands ready to work with Mr Sithole in ensuring that the PIC sticks to its original mandate of  creating value for government employees, who are its major shareholders.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Minister Sisulu evades questions on political interference and conflict of interest at Amatola Water Board

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), the Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu and her Acting Director-General, both avoided answering questions posed to them by the Democratic Alliance (DA) about a potential conflict of interest in the appointment of Outsourced Risk and Compliance Assessment (ORCA) and Open Water Advanced Risk Solutions (OWARS) to perform an investigation into the financial affairs of the Amatola Water Board. The companies have also been tasked with conducting lifestyle audits into the previous and current executive management of the Amatola Board, including the CEO and Exco Team.

The DA referred these allegations to SCOPA last week Friday for discussion and for the Minister to account to Parliament for the apparent conflict of interest and possible political interference in tender processes at Amatole. Following Minister Sisulu’s inability to answer attempts to hold her to account on Tuesday, the DA has again requested a follow-up SCOPA meeting with the Minister in order to ensure that she doesn’t run around these questions again.

As revealed by DA last week, the alleged conflict of interest is that the director of OWARS, Reavell Rhodes N’Kondo, shares a company interest with Lungile Bomela, the director of Empowering Water Solutions (EWS). EWS is at the centre of allegations that Minister Sisulu apparently favoured them for certain tenders at Amatola, including sand water extraction technology. Both  N’Kondo and Bomela are directors of ELF Foundation,  a nonprofit company from the province of the Free State.

Instead of answering the DA’s questions on the seemingly clear conflict of interest and her apparent political interference – she referred to Section 45.2 of the Water Service Act which determines that the Minister may appoint a person to investigate the affairs or financial position of a water board.

What this means is that Minister Sisulu has personally appointed, as she admits in her reference to Section 45.2 of the Water Service Act, a firm whose director has a known shared interest with the company at the centre of allegations it is meant to investigate, and which further has links to a person who is seen by many as the key pin in the allegations leveled against the Minister.

Add this to allegations about Minister Sisulu’s ambitions to become President and the can is indeed full of worms.

Given her much vaulted comments about clean governance it would have been refreshing if she had answered the DA’s question directly about the potential conflict of interest, instead of avoiding the issue, thus leading to even more questions being asked. Such as, what is her real intention in trying to muddy the waters at Amatola, and whether there is indeed an attempt by persons in her office to direct state resources to some project aimed at her personal ambitions?

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Government admits that Tourism Plan is not based on facts and statistics

At the Tourism Portfolio Committee Meeting held virtually yesterday, the National Department of Tourism (NDT) presented their revised strategy and amended Annual Performance Plan.

The presentation (slide 22) confirmed that one of the risks for the NDT is “inadequate impact evaluation of Covid-19 on the tourism sector” and “inadequate understanding of the supply-side of tourism” (See Annexure A). Slide 5 of the presentation (Annexure B) graphically presented the NDT’s “Local First Recovery Plan”.

Although the presentation prioritises domestic tourism, slide 22 confirms that such a decision is not based on research and statistically-driven data pertaining to the impact of Covid-19 on tourism and understanding the “supply-side of tourism”.

It is highly irresponsible for any government to make important decisions not supported by data and statistics.

This explains the previous disappointing one-dimensional plan that does not take the realities on the ground into account and indicates that the re-start of tourism to take place only in December 2020, by which time the tourism sector would be decimated.

The presentation confirmed that the department lacks data and statistics to meet the unrealistic goal to ensure that South Africa grows to 21 million tourists by 2030.

For this to be achieved tourism would need to grow 6% year on year!

Again, this target is simply wishful thinking with no concrete supporting information ensuring that this goal will realistically be met.

As things stand presently, South Africa has no real tourism recovery plan, as admitted by Tourism Minister Nkhensani Kubayi-Ngubane at the meeting.

The DA will continue to interact with the NDT to ensure that a proper and realist tourism plan is put in place so that the closure of businesses and job losses are minimised.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Government sponsored chaos jeopardises level 3 opening

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is appalled at the shambolic handling of the Level 3 regulations which were supposed to have been given to the country on Tuesday.

We have now been subjected to two successive cancellations where South Africans would be told what life would be like under Level 3.

Should the government get itself together in time to have a press conference by Thursday, this would leave businesses and workers with one working day’s notice on how they should proceed when we move to Level 3 on the 1st of June.

This is simply not good enough as many question marks remain regarding health protocols for each sector and trading hours for the liquor industry.

These protocols may be complex and require time to implement in many industries. To give such short notice (if any) may render many sectors unable to open due to lack of compliance.

It is very clear that there is a low-grade civil war playing out in the NCCC and Cabinet over these regulations which has resulted in the consecutive cancellations.

That the Ministers and President can not agree on what the regulations should look like is now abundantly obvious while the country is left wondering what Monday may look like.

Without firm leadership by the President and a good session of ‘bashing heads’ together in the command council, South Africans will remain at the mercy of inept and incompetent Ministers who are charged with putting these regulations together.

As each day passes, the contempt that this government has for the country and those trying to protect their livelihoods becomes more apparent. It is critical that these regulations are released immediately and the needs of the country are put above the disagreements within government.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Minister Nxesi must defuse Ters ticking time bomb at the UIF

The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has still not begun accepting Covid-19 Ters applications for May. This constitutes a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

It means that millions of wage earners face the prospect of receiving no income for May until the middle of June at the very earliest.

When the benefit finally arrives, it will be too little too late. Employers and employees have bills to pay and families to feed right now. They cannot wait.

Economic justice delayed is justice denied.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) repeatedly called on the Department of Employment and Labour to explain why the website for May applications was taking so long to go live.

The UIF Commissioner, Teboho Maruping, told the Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour last Wednesday that the online application system would be “going live on Friday (22 May)”. On Saturday I wrote to the UIF Commissioner, asking him the reason for the delay. He has still not responded.

On Monday, the DA called on the Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi, to announce what was happening with the Covid-19 Ters benefit for the month of May. By and large, the Minister remains missing in action.

Yesterday, on social media, the UIF responded to me by saying that the “Department of Employment and Labour is in the process of finalizing payments for April, announcements for applications for May will be communicated in due course. We apologize for the inconvenience cause [sic]”.

For most wage earners reliant on the Covid-19 Ters benefit during lockdown, this is more than a mere inconvenience. It is a cause for desperation, depression, and in some instances, financial devastation.

Given the length of time it has taken the UIF to make April payments (many of which only occurred in May), and the constant, desperate struggle of employers and employees to get their pound of flesh from the Fund, the latest delays do not augur well.

A recent response to a parliamentary question revealed that while over 195 000 employers and 2.5 million employees had, by 21 May, received Covid-19 Ters benefits for April to the tune of R14 billion, many received no benefits.

Over 76 000 employers and 559 000 employees had claims worth R2.3 billion rejected either because they were not identified on the UIF system, or simply because the UIF decided not to pay.

We know from thousands of desperate employers and employees that many claims were turned down by the UIF without any explanation.

Before the last remaining vestiges of debris from April non-payments have been cleaned up, the UIF is about to see another bomb explode.

Even with the UIF’s promised 10-day payment turnaround time, most workers will have to wait until deep into June to get their Covid-19 Ters benefit for May. This is going to cause enormous hardship, suffering and anger. At a time of desperate financial struggle, the delay in unacceptable.

The DA calls on the trade union movement (which thus far has been eerily silent) to hold the Minister of Employment and Labour to account and to take up the fight on behalf of workers, whose interests they claim to represent. Workers’ frustration should be directed not at employers, who Minister Nxesi has attempted to scapegoat for the UIF’s failures, but at the Department of Employment and Labour itself.

The DA further calls on Minister Nxesi to clarify:

  1. How much money is left in the UIF’s pot for the Covid-19 Ters benefit? Initially we were told that R40 billion had been set aside until the end of June to deal with claims resulting from the lockdown. The UIF is currently sitting on a total portfolio of about R135 billion, half of which lies in government bonds. When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a R500 billion economic rescue package last month, he said that R100 billion would be set aside “for the protection of jobs and to create jobs”. It seems almost certain that he intended for this money to come from the UIF. However, if, as National Treasury has predicted, between 3 and 7 million people lose their jobs because of Covid-19, then there is going to be huge pressure on the UIF in the form of retrenchment benefit claims very soon. The UIF’s actuaries need to tell us how much money is available and how long it will last.
  2. Whether the UIF has the capacity to process and pay Covid-19 Ters claims for the remainder of the phased lockdown? SARS is meant to be assisting the UIF to process and pay the Covid-19 Ters benefit. But there seems to be a mismarriage of information between the UIF and SARS. In April, some companies reported that up to two-thirds of their workforce did not benefit from the Covid-19 Ters scheme, even though every single worker was on the company’s payroll, the company was tax-compliant, and they were able to furnish all the necessary EMP201 declarations that had already been submitted to SARS. The role of SARS in assisting the UIF has become even more important now that, in terms of a new ministerial directive, individual employees can apply directly for the Ters benefit (and not only employers and bargaining councils as was the case previously). This runs the risk of placing an additional intolerable strain on the UIF.
  3. Why so few foreign national workers seem to have been paid out by Ters? The Minister previously indicated that the UIF does not have a system to test and verify the authenticity of foreign nationals’ passport documents as they expire every two years. He claimed that the UIF had developed a control whereby all foreign passport numbers would be verified by the Department of Home Affairs through each relevant Embassy. This is a long and tortuous process and something needs to be done urgently to ensure that foreign national workers get their just desserts.

This afternoon, a meeting of Nedlac will take place to assess the UIF’s technical and financial capacity to continue to pay out Ters benefits in the long run. The Minister of Employment and Labour needs to come out of hiding and defuse the ticking Ters time bomb ahead of the meeting. Time is of the essence.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Opinion | Extended hard lockdown a cataclysmic mistake not to be repeated

Some people may choose or have the luxury to self-isolate. Other, particularly younger, households may weigh the risk of joblessness and hunger over Covid, and therefore choose to keep working.

In his insightful book, The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell opens with the prescient warning: “Dangers to society may be fatal, without being immediate.”

And indeed, extended hard lockdown has exposed South Africa to many such fatal dangers, causing more problems than it has solved. It is a gross overreaction by an ANC government that has overreached its powers and continues to overestimate its capabilities.

Over the coming months as the virus peaks, pressure on South Africa’s health system will rise rapidly.

We should continue to build healthcare capacity and take reasonable, targeted measures to slow the spread of the virus and protect high-risk individuals.

But this real and immediate health challenge should not constitute reason for government to continue with widespread hard lockdowns (levels 4 and 5) and it should not let government off the hook for its disastrous handling of the virus situation over the past six weeks.

There is much to suggest that extending hard lockdown has political rather than health motivations.

But even if well-intended, there are unintended consequences causing social damage on a scale that dwarfs the covid risk. Already, millions of people have been left destitute.

Millions will suffer and die prematurely. And responses to many other health risks, such as to tuberculosis, have been undermined.

As Sowell notes: “Doing good on some problem right under one’s nose is not enough in a world of constrained options and systemic interactions, where the overlooked costs of immediate benevolence take their toll elsewhere.”

The burden of economic devastation will be borne disproportionately by the poor and by young people, who have their whole lives ahead of them. For their sakes, we can and must do better going forwards.

Specifically, we cannot continue with hard lockdowns in large parts of South Africa, even if infection is spreading there.

In his address to the nation on Sunday, Ramaphosa claimed: “The groups we consulted are as diverse and varied as the South African people themselves, and all agree that we acted appropriately and decisively to slow the spread of the virus.”

This is simply not true. Diverse and varied groups, including the DA, have pointed out that many lockdown regulations have no bearing on the Covid risk whatsoever – they do nothing to slow transmission. This itself gives the lie to Ramaphosa’s claim.

Yet it’s not just individual regulations, but the hard lockdown in its entirety that has been inappropriate as a covid response, beyond the first 3-weeks.

The DA and many civil society groupings have clearly voiced their opposition to it.

Yes, government acted decisively in declaring the initial 3-week lockdown and South Africans broadly supported it.

Back then, Covid death projections for South Africa were much higher than they are now (350?000 then versus 40 000-45?000 now) and we knew very little about the disease.

It made sense to err on the side of caution.

Furthermore, there was a commitment by government to “bridge” people and struggling businesses across this 3-week divide. Long-term economic destruction was not an inevitable outcome.

But the past six weeks of hard lockdown have been a cataclysmic mistake on the part of the ANC government.

They have failed to adjust their response to new information, in particular (1) falling fatality projections and (2) mounting evidence that Covid is not a major threat to healthy 0-70-year-olds.

As fatality projections plummeted, government’s Covid response became disproportionate, as if saving lives from Covid is more important than saving lives from other risks.

South Africa already has over 60?000 deaths per year from tuberculosis, also transmitted through airborne droplets. (This will likely be higher this year, since testing for TB has dropped by 50% during lockdown.)

So it is wholly irrational and inappropriate to cripple our economy by shutting it down without life support for over two months, for a worst-case scenario of 45?000 Covid deaths.

The longer the lockdown progresses, the greater and more irreversible the economic destruction. By week 4, it had already become clear that government’s economic relief promises were being broken.

Indeed nine weeks in, 3.5 million people still await their promised R350 Covid grant, while government has failed on its UIF and TERS commitments.

And even if government had kept its side of the social contract, it is wholly inappropriate to lump so much debt on our children and future generations.

Furthermore, even as it became clear that healthy 0-70-year-olds have little to fear from Covid, the government failed to change its strategy to one of protecting the high-risk group while allowing the rest of society to continue operating.

The latest CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention) risk projections are that 35% of cases are asymptomatic and that 0,4% of all symptomatic cases are fatal, with this number at 0.05% for those under 50, giving those under 50 with symptomatic infections a 99.95% chance of survival.

Not only did the ANC government fail to respond to evolving Covid risk projections, they also failed to keep their side of the social contract when they asked South Africans to forego their freedoms and livelihoods to buy government time to prepare hospitals.

Hospital preparation has been inadequate, which is why there has been very little reporting on it, other than in the Western Cape.

Ramaphosa has made much of government’s “risk-adjusted” response.

And indeed, managing Covid for an optimal outcome is all about striking the right balance between all the myriad risks we face and therefore making the optimal trade-off decisions.

In line with its guiding ideology, the ANC government has chosen to centrally control every aspect of the Covid response.

The implicit assumption is that a small group of ANC politicians can better assess the complex risk landscape and thereby drive a better response centrally, than can society itself, through the aggregated risk assessments of each household.

Far better would be for government to have been transparent with all the available data and information, and to have provided a reasonable set of safety regulations (physical distancing, masks where physical distancing not possible, sanitising) for all to follow.

Thereafter, each household, with intimate knowledge of its own risk landscape, should have had more freedom of decision-making as to how to respond.

Some people may choose or have the luxury to self-isolate. Other, particularly younger, households may weigh the risk of joblessness and hunger over Covid, and therefore choose to keep working.

Overall, a far more appropriate Covid response is reached in this way, since the aggregated risk assessment is far better refined, and thus the trade-off decisions far less damaging.

No matter how Ramaphosa spins it, and whatever the intention behind the ANC government’s lockdown, we must judge it on its results. It was a terrible mistake that should not be extended or repeated.

Ultimately, the ANC government remains the greatest risk to South Africa’s overall well-being.

DA welcomes Dudu Myeni delinquency ruling

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the High Court ruling declaring former SAA Board Chairperson, Dudu Myeni, a delinquent director in terms of Section 162 of the Companies Act.

During her turbulent tenure at the national carrier, Myeni proved that she was clearly unfit, incompetent, and wholly incapable of holding any directorship position.

The DA has long held the view that Myeni played a major role in bringing SAA to its knees and to its subsequent bankruptcy.

Despite the myriad of allegations stacked against her, Myeni was given a soft exit from SAA without any consequences for the malfeasance that took place under her watch. We are therefore pleased that this court order will ensure that Myeni will never be deployed to any SOE or public business as a director by the ANC as a loyal cadre.

Furthermore, the DA trusts that this judgment will ensure some sort of accountability for Myeni.

We have noted that Judge Ronel Tomay has requested that the judgment and the evidence in this matter be referred to the NPA for their consideration and determination of whether an investigation regarding possible criminal conduct should follow.

We urge the NPA to take up this matter urgently in order to ensure that Myeni finally has her day in Court.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Here’s how Government should accommodate public participation on regulations

The Democratic Alliance (DA) strongly believes that Level 3 regulations must be open to public comment and submission.

As with the instatement of Level 4 lockdown regulations, public participation is crucial and must under no circumstances be abandoned in the move to Level 3.

The DA suggests the following to allow maximum public participation:

  • Publish the draft regulations on the Government website;
  • Each regulation should have a feature that allows for comment from the public;
  • Create a special email address dedicated to public comment on the proposed regulations; and
  • Invite South Africans on social media to respond to the proposed regulations.

Comments on the regulations from the public should be transparent and visible to anyone interested.

As it stands, the Government has lost a lot of good will and trust from the public due to the blunders from its Ministers, and its unwillingness to share the data that its models are based on.

The normal legislative process in South Africa is detailed and thorough: For a law to be passed, a bill must be drawn up by government departments or introduced by committees or individual members of Parliament. It is then opened to the public for comment and must be passed by both the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces before the President signs it into effect.

It is bizarre that Level 3 lockdown regulations will be gazetted, implemented and enforced without any opportunity for public participation whatsoever.

There is no excuse for Government not to open them up for comment and participation. The DA strongly believes that Government’s reason for not doing so, is that it will expose the extend of public disgruntlement and frustration with Government’s current unsubstantiated and thumb-suck “legislative” process.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court