2021 Elections rerunning

President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen – Photo: GCIS

‘It’s the worst thing the ANC has ever done’ – Steenhuisen jabs government

He’s started Human Rights Day with fire in his belly – and John Steenhuisen believes the ANC’s latest failure is ‘their worst one yet’.

2021 Elections rerunning

President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen – Photo: GCIS

DA leader John Steenhuisen has made a bold, but perhaps understandable claim about the ANC government’s underwhelming efforts to rollout the COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa…

After fluffing their lines several times, the Ramaphosa administration can’t get out of second gear with its mass vaccination programme – infuriating the critics across the Parliamentary benches.

Is this the worst thing the ANC has ever done?

Steenhuisen, positively raging on Sunday morning, went as far as to claim that the vaccine blunder has been the government’s ‘single worst failure’ since rising to power 27 years ago – ranking it above the cesspit of state capture, and sustained levels of extremely high poverty over the past three decades

According to the opposition frontman, the inability to procure vaccines is ‘inexplicable’ – and allegedly ‘violates the basic human rights of every South African’. The first 177 000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson jabs have been administered at a snail’s pace – and a shipment of one million AstraZeneca continues to lie dormant in a Johannesburg warehouse.

John Steenhuisen fumes over sluggish vaccine rollout

With Sunday being Human Rights Day, John Steenhuisen is in no mood to celebrate. He outlined why he believes the glacial inoculation plans go against protections offered by SA’s own Constitution:

“The biggest violation of the human rights of South Africans has been government’s failure to procure Covid-19 vaccines, and its failure to put in place a rollout plan for when it might one day purchase meaningful amounts of the vaccine. This has been the ANC government’s single worst failure in the 27 years of our democracy.”

“Its inexplicable failure to procure vaccines timeously, when these vaccines were available to it, is a violation of people’s rights, in terms of the Constitution, to have access to healthcare services, as well as a violation of government’s obligation to take reasonable measures to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to access healthcare.”