‘Blatant power grab’: Steenhuisen blasts lockdown extension

Without parliamentary oversight, Steenhuisen believes that the ANC is using the lockdown as a mechanism to run a ‘dictatorship’.

by Dan Meyer

15-10-2020 13:50

in News

DA leader John Steenhuisen.

Photo by Gallo Images/Ziyaad Douglas)

After the national state of disaster was once again extended for another month on Wednesday 14 October, South Africa is set to continue its lockdown into mid-November at the very least, leaving Democratic Alliance (DA) interim leader John Steenhuisen fuming.

Steenhuisen is adamant that the harm caused by the lockdown far outweighs its merits, saying that the decision to maintain the emergency legislation is a “blatant power grab” that allows the African National Congress (ANC) to operate a “dictatorship”.

Steenhuisen accuses ANC of running ‘dictatorship’

During the lockdown, parliament has been suspended and the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC), which has been free to implement regulations and restrictions in accordance with its assessment of the virus’ threat has taken the reins. Steenhuisen said on Thursday – when the state of disaster that enables this process was supposed to expire – that the lack of parliamentary oversight is enabling a dictatorship.

“This is a blatant power grab,” he said. “The state of disaster deliberately cuts out parliamentary oversight, and effectively allows government to run a dictatorship, making new laws that fundamentally effect people’s lives without having to consult Parliament.”

Steenhuisen charged that there have been only 10 deaths a day resulting from COVID-19, although the Department of Health and Minister Zweli Mkhize has presented data sets in the last three days that indicate between 83 and 120 deaths per day.

[The state of disaster] has absolutely nothing to do with the virus,” he said. “SA has recently recorded around 10 COVID-19 deaths per day, in a country where average deaths per day from all causes is well over 1 200. Around 40 people die daily on SA’s roads, yet we do not give government extraordinary powers to shut down our road network.”

‘Lockdown is the biggest killer’

He said that “rank opportunism by a party hellbent on controlling every aspect of people’s lives” is being committed.

“It’s an anti-democratic move that will hamper our economic recovery by reducing investment certainty and by enabling a continuation of government’s irrational, ineffective lockdown restrictions.”

He said that the “real disaster in this country is the rampant poverty, unemployment and inequality that have ballooned due to our disaster of a state and its disastrous, prolonged lockdown”, and listed other issues that have been exacerbated since March.

Steenhuisen said that the adverse effects of the lockdown include:

A significant expected increase in deaths to cancer, TB and other diseases due to disrupted access to screening, testing, vaccines etc.
A significant rise in depression and suicide rates.
3 million job losses including over 300 000 domestic worker jobs.
Widespread hunger – a quarter of township households don’t have enough to eat.
The most disadvantaged groups (poor, rural, women, unskilled, less educated) have suffered most, with job losses 10 times higher for the poorest 50% of workers compared to the richest 25%.
40% of school days will be lost for most children in 2020, with education inequality and school dropout rates inevitably increasing. ECD attendance levels are still down by 75%.
Massive curtailment of basic civil liberties.
Billions of rands of annual tax revenue foregone, which could have been used to deliver essential services and reduce poverty.

He said that life expectancy is expected to drop due to greater poverty, and that there will “inevitably be lives lost to increased violence that is the natural result of the social instability which arises from SA’s large and growing inequality”.