Central SA
Cogta minister takes lockdown judgment to Bfn SCA─── LUCKY NKUYANE 10:26 Wed, 26 May 2021
Minister of Cooperative Governance (Cogta), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is on Wednesday taking the Pretoria High Court judgment regarding lockdown level 3 and 4 to the Bloemfontein-based Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
She wants the court to overturn and set aside the judgment made by Judge Norman Davis, that the regulations issued in terms of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) were unconstitutional and invalid. She argues that the Pretoria-based High Court, during its judgment in 2020, lead evidence beyond pleadings by finding that level 3 was unconstitutional. Dlamini-Zuma says the court did not apply the rationality test correctly to the six regulations on which its decision turned. The challenge was launched by Reyno de Beer and his organisation for social justice, the Liberty Fighters Network (LFN), during level four of the lockdown in May 2020.
Meanwhile, regarding today's court battle over the previous judgment, De Beer and LFN says while the Pretoria High Court on 2 June 2020 had ordered the Minister to align her lockdown Regulations with the Constitution, the Minister never complied with that order and opted to appeal the judgment believing that the Court order would remain suspended.
“Subsequently, since 24 June 2020, LFN and De Beer informed the public that the court order in question was never suspended. The basis for the argument is previous Constitutional Court judgments, confirming that the DMA regulations have prescribed and that something which no longer exists in legal terms, cannot be revised in a proceeding. In consequence of this argument, the Minister unlawfully continued to make amendments as if she was above the law,” De Beer and LFN adds.
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