On Monday, 04 April 2022, President Ramaphosa announced an end to the National State of Disaster caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This means that the various alert levels of lockdown the country had to deal with also finally came to an end after a period of more than two years.
As reported by News24 on Tuesday, there was mixed reactions to the announcement by the various opposition parties and other stakeholders in the country.
Where the IFP and Cosatu welcomed the move, GOOD secretary-general Brett Heron called it “largely symbolic” and stated that South Africans have already learned to live with the pandemic.
Interestingly, the FF-Plus spokesperson, Philip van Staden, stated that the government was merely “shifting power”, seeing that the so-called lockdown regulations will now just be replaced by amendments to the National Health Act.
Official opposition party the DA has for a long time now been calling for an end to the state of disaster, however spokesperson Cilliers Brink also raised concerns with the new health regulations in effectively agreeing with the stance of the FF-Plus.
Although the lifting of the restrictions is to be welcomed against the background of the current narrative of working towards South Africa’s economic revival, it remains to be seen if this official end to the national disaster will indeed have any significant practical impact on the economy after promulgation of the amendments to the National Health Act.
