WATCH: Clicks customer starts embarrassing fight about not wearing mask

A video has surfaced on social media of an altercation between shoppers at a Clicks pharmacy, with one man refusing to wear a mask because “the high court, Gauteng”. But despite Judge Norman Davis’ findings last month in the Liberty Fighters Network case, the current lockdown regulations are all still in place – including those around wearing masks.

The video, which was posted to Twitter, showed a Clicks staffer and other shoppers repeatedly asking the man to put a mask on.

He, however, refused and tensions quickly started to rise with the man saying:

“I don’t have to wear it … The high court, Gauteng … Don’t try and bullshit me, I’m sick and tired of you guys that trying to tell me what to do … [sic]”.

This guy refuses to wear a mask in public.

When advised to do so, he refuses and puts on a embarrassing fight.

Let’s make him famous ???????? pic.twitter.com/xkXbAXSBQ1

— Engineer Matšhela Koko (@koko_matshela) July 2, 2020

Judge Davis, sitting in the North Gauteng High Court, on 2 June declared the lockdown regulations unconstitutional and invalid, and gave Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma two weeks to bring them up to par.

His order was suspended four days later, though, when Dlamini-Zuma launched an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

The suspension was extended last Tuesday when the minister was granted leave to appeal – save for insofar as Davis’ original ruling related to a handful of specific regulations. These included the regulations around exercise, the movement of children, funerals as well as the closure of beaches and public parks. When it came to these regulations, government was given another ten days from the date leave was granted to remedy the defects.

This means at present, all of the alert level 3 lockdown regulations are still in place. They could also continue to be – even after the new deadline – if the minister launches another application for leave to appeal with the SCA directly.

And according to these regulations, “a person must when in a public place, wear a cloth face mask or a homemade item that covers the nose and mouth or another appropriate item to cover the nose and mouth”. In addition, “no person is allowed to be in a public place, use any form of public transport, or enter a public building, place or premises, if that person is not wearing a cloth face mask or a homemade item that covers the nose and mouth, or another appropriate item to cover the nose and mouth”.

Regardless, the Liberty Fighters Network – the NPO that took the case in question to court – has been actively calling on South Africans to “go back to normal”. In its latest statement, the group said it was “advocating anyone who so wishes, may now legally remove their masks and may not be arrested or criminally prosecuted for doing it”.

Said constitutional law expert advocate Paul Hoffman SC on Monday, though, this approach was wrong in law.

“They seem to think their relief has survived the appeal process, when in fact it hasn’t,” he said. “And in those circumstances it’s very clear the wearing of masks in public is still the law of the land and unless the appeal court says otherwise – or government changes the regulations – that remains.”

He said the Clicks incident was “indicative of an impatience with the lockdown in some circles and a willingness to believe anything you read about its end”.

National police spokesperson Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo on Monday also confirmed that while it was not a criminal offense not to wear a mask in public – meaning you could not be arrested – wearing one remained “mandatory”.

“And it is the prerogative of the store owner and store security to deny a person entry into a store or public place if they refuse to wear a mask,” he added.

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