[imagesource: Thuli Dlamini]

Sorry, I know we said we were done with open letters for a while after last month’s back and forth.

For Thuli Madonsela, who strived during her time as the Public Protector of South Africa to hold our leaders and institutions accountable, we will make an exception.

Madonsela is currently the Law Trust Chair in Social Justice at Stellenbosch University, but she still found time to pen an open letter, addressed to President Cyril Ramaphosa and published on the Financial Mail.

Regarding lockdown regulations, she says “we need to remember that rules have to be reasonable – in the court of public opinion too”.

Here are some excerpts from the letter:

It seems to me that the two key challenges to the lockdown are social justice and reasonableness — which are both protected in the constitution… [which] requires that no section of society should be unjustly and unfairly excluded from opportunities, resources, benefits and privileges. No group should bear a disproportionate burden under the Covid-19 rules.

But you need to know, Mr President, that there are increasing concerns about the reasonableness of some of the Covid-19 rules. Like equality, reasonableness is also a legal requirement for policies. Section 33 of the constitution says: “Everyone has the right to just administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair.” Now, you have conceded that some of the rules are contradictory. And I’m sure you’d agree with me that contradictory regulation cannot be said to be reasonable…

Expect more people to push back against the perceived excesses, since parliament, which is an essential check and balance, has been missing in action. Your newsletter of May 18 shows that you’re aware of this, saying: “We will continue to welcome different — even dissenting — viewpoints around our national coronavirus response.”

As we have already seen, there has been great pushback, with one major judgment earlier in the week declaring some alert level 5 and 4 regulations “unconstitutional and invalid”.

The government is also facing further legal battles, brought forward by the likes of the DA, the Freedom Front Plus, and tobacco industry giants.

What really upsets Madonsela, though, is the treatment of South Africa’s most vulnerable citizens during the lockdown:

How long will the cry of the young people in villages and townships — whose self-employment has ground to a halt, their unregistered businesses ineligible for loans and salary relief — go unheard? While the R350 basic income grant for the unemployed is fantastic, how long will it take to reach the poverty hotspots?

Instead, we read of food parcels being delivered randomly in a process tainted by corruption.

The failed grant delivery process is another damning indictment on Sassa, and our government at large, and the struggles of poor South Africans to access relief promised to them should anger us all.

Madonsela finishes:

You need to hear them, Mr President. You need to hear Gogo Dlamini, who has been stopped from making the R350 a week she got selling hot amagwinya or meals at taxi ranks.

People’s resistance to colonial and apartheid laws has taught me that when the law is unjust, violating it is not only justified as legitimate, it is exalted as heroic. Perhaps you can take a page out of De Saint-Exupéry’s book [The Little Prince], Mr President, and not only save the people from avoidable pain, but also preserve democracy.

As South Africans grow increasingly weary of the more ‘draconian’ and arbitrary lockdown regulations, and the government continues to fail those most in need, the pressure on President Ramaphosa to get the balancing act correct increases.

Read Madonsela’s letter in full here.

[source:financialmail]