Deciding between ‘essential’ and ‘nonessential people’ turns out not to be so easy

As South Africa headed for 35 days in lockdown to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, the raft of legislation introduced under the National Disaster Act has produced numerous amendments … and a slew of arrests as people either disregarded them or simply did not understand them.

To this end, criminal law advocate and former associate professor of law James Grant has compiled a single document of the five sets of regulations which govern the lockdown and may be downloaded from his blog, grant.law.

And, said Grant, lawmakers were slowly waking up to the fact there was almost no service or function which was not essential to the economy.

“The regulations are expanding and expanding, and it seems to me as the legislature begins to realise that drawing a line between essential and non-essential services is really very difficult,” Grant said yesterday.

For instance, said Grant, to a large extent those people who we would think contributed less to the economy, judged particularly by how much they were paid, namely cleaners and waste disposal workers, were possibly the most essential of all.

“The legislature is running into the problem that very few occupations are redundant or worthless, because that’s what they have to be if we say we don’t need them,” Grant said. “Even entertainers. The great dynasties of the past realised we needed them simply to keep sane by distracting us from our problems. Where do you draw the line?”

Grant said the state and President Cyril Ramaphosa needed to be complimented on how fast they had moved in writing the regulations written under the National Disaster Management Act.

“I’ve never seen the law moving as fast as it is moving here, it’s unprecedented,” Grant said.

“They could be criticised for chopping and changing if you were looking to pick a fight with them, but if you’re trying to be constructive what we’re seeing is that they are working like crazy and realising as they’re working at this they need to make amendments, and it’s a work in progress.”

Grant noted the lawmakers’ task would have been easier if they had heeded former United States president Barack Obama’s 2014 remarks about the Ebola outbreak.

“We know how to prevent it from spreading. We know how to care for those who contract it. We know that if we take the proper steps, we can save lives,” Obama said at the time. “But we have to act fast. We can’t dawdle on this one.”

Two outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and again from 2018 to 2020 in the Democratic Republic of Congo saw more than 13,000 people killed by the haemorrhagic disease.

So far, since it was reported to be a public health emergency of international concern in December, nearly 97,000 people have died either from the coronavirus, or complications related to it.

Grant believed government should have had a framework in place with thought out measures which could have been implemented immediately, and he believed the work should have been done beforehand and deserved criticism for not being prepared.

The implementation of the regulations by security forces also showed there were gaps in the laws for how to deal with people.

“Not this madness of making people roll in the street and lie on each other, what are these idiots thinking?” said Grant.

The overzealousness also made for a fertile breeding ground for rebellion against the regulations.

“Why would anybody subjected to that kind of treatment have any respect for the regulations or what government is asking of us?” Grant asked.

– amandaw@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.