DA’s opposition to ‘severe, crippling’ laws gets mixed reactions

The Democratic Alliance (DA) received flack for suggesting that the national lockdown shouldn’t have been wholly extended, but the people’s suffering and the economy should have been the priority consideration.

However, the party received support from another expert who believed that the DA’s view made sense as the government should come up with a better exit strategy from the lockdown.

The analysts were reacting to the view expressed by DA interim leader John Steenhuisen, who said the party would prefer a gradual phasing out of the lockdown over the coming weeks as opposed to its continuation.

Steenhuisen described the lockdown regulations as “severe and economically crippling”.

“Our great concern is that President (Cyril) Ramaphosa has justified this extension as if we face a binary choice between health concerns and economic concerns,” Steenhuisen said.

The DA leader said decisions like this will have dire repercussions on the economic wellbeing of South Africans, and must be rooted in scientific research and pragmatic policy positions.

He said the absence of data and modelling made it difficult to accept that the lockdown extension may effectively curb the spread of Covid-19.

“The resulting economic fallout now means that it is not only lives which are threatened by the virus, but also livelihoods by our economic financial collapse as a result of further lockdown regulations,” he said.

This position was doubted by political economy analyst Daniel Silke, who said the extension of the lockdown was necessary.

“The problem with the DA is it wants to differ from the ANC. This way the party is breaking from the political consensus reached across the political parties on the Covid-19 matter,” Silke said.

There was sufficient scientific evidence that the lockdown was working and the social distancing was effective.

“Perhaps in three weeks’ time the DA view might be relevant, but for now they have jumped the gun,” Silke said.

He said perhaps the DA envisaged that business would over time be disgruntled as they felt the pinch of the economy unwinding due to the lockdown.

But another analyst, Ralph Mathekga, had a different view. He said the DA made sense as it was important that the government adopted a better exit strategy from the lockdown than they did. Just extending the lockdown without rapidly increasing the testing will not help.

It was important that the Ramaphosa government must strike a balance between saving lives and saving the economy.

“We should not just rely on the lockdown. A parliamentary oversight committee is necessary,” Mathekga said.

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