Healthcare Opinion South Africa

South Africa must not allow Health Act amendments to replace State of Disaster regulations

It is extremely worrying to us that, despite the formal lifting of this National State of Disaster, our government now seems to be hell-bent on normalising the restrictions that we faced for so long by introducing regulations to the Health Act that will effectively normalise this very abnormal state of affairs and shift the power of unnatural regulations to the Minister of Health.
Source: iStock.
Source: iStock.

Today, we have written an open letter to the Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla, calling on him to retract these amendments as we believe that is it a transparent and opportunistic attempt to extend the unilateral power that the South African government afforded themselves during the State of Disaster.

We call on all South Africans to scrutinise these proposed amendments and to lodge their objection before or on the 16 April 2022.

We suffered under the restrictions of the National State of Disaster for 750 days. This led to enormous hardship and devastation to our country’s economy and to people’s lives and livelihoods.

We cannot afford for it to be normalised.

About Cilliers Brink

Cilliers Brink is a minister of parliament and DA national spokesperson.
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