The Democratic Alliance (DA) has warned of high economic costs if South Africa’s lockdown regulations are not amended to ensure economic activity is supported and sustained.
DA interim leader John Steenhuisen cautioned against the decision to extend the lockdown to 30 April, saying it was a ‘mistake’ to pit the lives of people against their livelihoods.
‘This is a false dilemma. Rather, the difficult trade-offs to be made are between lives lost or damaged by Covid-19, and lives lost or damaged by the drastic measures to contain its spread,’ he said.
Steenhuisen also highlighted the lack of data and modelling showing that a lockdown was an effective method to curb the spread of the pandemic.
He suggested amendments to current regulations as a means to making the lockdown more sustainable and credible. These included urgently relaxing the listing of essential goods, ramping up testing, scrapping BBBEE requirements for SMME aid, guaranteeing parliamentary oversight, amending the minimum wage requirement, and adjusting the national budget to fund relief efforts.
The amounts set aside in the current budget to fund SOE bailouts, such as the R16.4 billion for SAA must be repurposed and released into the economy in the form of business relief, Steenhuisen said.
Steenhuisen also said his party had been working with industry and health policy experts to compile a lockdown grid to outline the level of regulation which should be applied at different stages of the Covid-19 infection in the country. This would follow international best practice models
In this way, the lockdown could become sustainable while the ailing economy would not collapse completely.