COVID-19

 

• The details of criteria to be met when applying each month until the end of March 2022 for a R350 social relief of distress grant were announced on 4 August.
  • Prospective beneficiaries should be:
    • South African citizens or permanent residents, or
    • refugees registered on the Department of Home Affairs database, or
    • ‘asylum seekers whose section 22 permits or visas are valid or were valid on 15 March 2020’, or
    • the holders of permits under the:
      • special Angolan dispensation
      • Lesotho exemption permit dispensation, or the
      • Zimbabwe exemption permit dispensation.
  • In each case, the applicant should also be:
    • living in South Africa
    • ‘above the age of 18 and below the age of 60’
    • unemployed
    • not personally receiving any other social grant
    • not already receiving or qualifying to receive an unemployment insurance benefit
    • not receiving a National Student Financial Aid Scheme stipend or any other financial aid
    • not receiving ‘any other government Covid-19 response support’, and
    • not ‘resident in a government-funded or subsidised institution’.

 

• A sports, arts and culture ministerial directive issued on 19 July has been amended to reflect relevant requirements in the 25 July disaster management regulations for adjusted lockdown level three, as amended.

 

• New guidelines have been gazetted on compiling a Covid-19 prevention, mitigation and management code of practice for mines.

 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS

 

• According to Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the recently gazetted date was announced as the first step in a process to be followed by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in approaching the Constitutional Court for a postponement, in line with recommendations in the Moseneke Inquiry report.
• The IEC has:
  • issued a media statement explaining the process in detail, and
  • pending a Constitutional Court ruling, gazetted an election timetable.

 

CABINET RESHUFFLE

 

• The swearing-in of new Ministers and Deputy Ministers recently announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa left the National Assembly without its Speaker and some portfolio committees without their chairpersons.
• Parliament has issued a media statement on the process to be followed in electing a new Speaker and new chairpersons for the committees concerned.

 

JUSTICE

 

• The 2017 Legal Aid regulations have been amended.

 

ECONOMY

 

• The South African Sugar Association and its members have been granted a two-year extension to the June 2020 conditional exemption from certain practices prohibited in terms of the 1998 Competition Act.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL

 

• A ‘second-generation’ air quality management plan for the Vaal triangle airshed has been gazetted.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby