Court orders Joburg church to comply with Covid-19 restrictions

The High Court in Johannesburg this morning ordered a local church to toe the line and abide by the recently announced moratorium on mass gatherings.

The Gauteng Department of Health approached the court on an urgent basis, in a desperate bid to halt services at the St. John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Katlehong after getting wind on Wednesday afternoon that the congregation was gathering at the church premises.

“Further information received indicated that the members of the [church] who had gathered as aforesaid exceeded 100 people,” the department’s head of legal services, Hlengiwe Goba, said in court papers.

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday night placed a moratorium on gatherings of more than 100 people, in a bid to try to curb the spread of Covid-19 in South Africa. And in terms of new regulations – which were gazetted by the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Diamini Zuma, late on Wednesday night – anyone who contravenes the ban by organising an event at which more than 100 people are gathered, is now “guilty of an offence and, on conviction, liable to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or to both such fine and imprisonment”.

Goba said that upon hearing about the gathering at the St. John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church, she and a lawyer from the State Attorney’s Office went to the scene to investigate. The department said in a statement yesterday that the gathering was “indeed with people way more than 100, including members of public that were protesting outside the church for it to be closed”.

Goba said in the court papers that those in charge were asked to call off the gathering but they refused.

Further, she said, they indicated there would be gatherings “every day until Sunday, 21 March 2020 – the first to be convened at 5am in the morning, the second at 6pm and the last for the day at 9pm”.

“In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, as declared by the World Health Organisation, there is a serious risk that the risk that the gathering will contribute to the spread of the Covid-19 virus thereby [undermining] the government’s efforts to get the spread of the virus under control,” Goba explained.

“The spread of the virus in a township such as Katlehong poses a live threat, not only to the members of the [church], but to the community at large. A large number of people living in townships, including Katlehong, rely on public transport to get around. Therefore, the risk of the spread of the virus is great.”

The court this morning granted the department an interim order in terms of which the St. John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church has now been interdicted and restrained from “convening a church service where more than 100 people are present”.

The order included a clause allowing the police to intervene “in the event of the [church] failing and/or refusing to comply”.

The case is due back in court in June, for arguments around making the interim order being made final.

Efforts were made to contact the St. John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church for comment but the contact persons listed on the church’s public platforms were not able to assist and the phone number for the head office appeared not to be working.

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