The National Employers’ Association of South Africa (Neasa) is preparing court papers to fight in the High Court the implementation of the government’s new health regulations, which are expected to be enforced now that the national State of Disaster (SOD) has been lifted.
Neasa CEO Gerhard Papenfus, reacting to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of the lifting of the SOD last night, said the proposed rules were “draconian”. The rules will lead to the immediate implementation of new occupational health and safety regulations for the workplace and new health regulations to deal with notifiable diseases.
“As from today, we no longer live under a State of Disaster. Unfortunately, as of today, we live under disastrous new rules which, unless successfully challenged, will become a permanent feature of our lives. These rules are all aimed at control, jeopardising our resolve, and at the implementation of more freedom erosion measures in the future. At no stage were these rules subjected to parliamentary oversight. Neasa is in the process of preparing an application in the high court to set these measures aside,” Papenfus said.
Among the new regulations, which are designed to become effective when the SOD is lifted, is the Code of Good Practice: Managing Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in the Workplace.
“We are perturbed by the contents of the newly introduced code and the accompanying regulations in respect of Hazardous Biological Agents (HBA) in the workplace,” Papenfus said.
The inclusion of the virus as an HBA in the regulations effectively required every employer to comply with all the HBA regulations, he added.
He believes the regulations are “impractical” and “confusing” and ignore the truth about the virus and its latest Omicron variant, as well as the appropriateness of vaccines, while placing “massive” and “unreasonable” administrative and legal obligations on employers.
AfriForum campaign officer, Reiner Duvenage, said the lifting of the SOD was merely “symbolic”.
“This announcement will do little to change the status quo, since the current Covid-19 regulations will remain in place for a further month, after which the government’s controversial new health regulations will come into force.”
The new health regulations amounted to the permanent legal enactment of “supposedly temporary measures” afforded to the government under the Disaster Management Act, he added.
“This means that most of the Covid-19 measures will remain in place, and some measures that were struck down in court, such as forced quarantine, will take effect again.”
AfriForum is preparing legal commentary in opposition to the new health regulations that would outline that the regulations are irrational and illegal.
“The government’s ending of the state of disaster should be seen as merely symbolic since it is planning on permanently enacting Covid-19 measures into the health regulations. We as AfriForum strongly and unequivocally oppose the government’s sly and power-hungry actions. We owe it to our members and the general public to prevent this outrageous abuse of power,” Duvenage said.
Along with its legal commentary, AfriForum has created a petition against the proposed health regulations which has been signed by around 25 000 people.
Democratic Alliance (DA) national spokesperson Cilliers Brinke said the party was concerned about the new health regulations.
“It is extremely worrying to us that, despite the formal lifting of this 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,” Brinke said.
The DA has written an open letter to the Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla, calling on him to retract the amendments which it believes are “a transparent and opportunistic attempt to extend the unilateral power that the South African government afforded themselves during the State of Disaster”.
