Last year National Assembly had the chance to amend the Disaster Management Act to prevent the abuse of government power under a national state of disaster.

At the time the government’s monumental mishandling of Covid-19, was still fresh in the minds of ordinary South Africans: the corruption, the mismanagement, the shutdown of entire industries in defiance of economic and scientific evidence.

The Disaster Management Act, so the lockdown made clear, has serious constitutional defects, making it a dangerous weapon in the hands of incompetent ministers who only care about command and control.

Section 27 gives a single cabinet minister, presently the honourable Dlamini-Zuma, the power to decree a national state of disaster, by which she obtains extraordinary law-making and lawbreaking powers. Neither the minister’s decree nor regulations issued under it need to be tabled or debated in Parliament.

Parliament cannot veto or amend these regulations and the decree can be rolled over again and again by stroke of ministerial pen, so that the country can in theory be governed under a perpetual national state of disaster. This is why the DA is challenging section 27 of the Act, but had the ANC majority not blocked the Disaster Management Amendment Bill last year, parliament could’ve solved the problem by its own accord.

At the time the DA sounded the following warning: “The government’s handling of Covid-19 was worse, because they had too much power. The same is going to be true of the next disaster.” And so, here we are again.

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