COVID-19 STATE OF DISASTER

Transport

• Ministerial directives gazetted on 29 January have confirmed the measures already in place under adjusted lockdown level three at:
  • seaports
  • airports
  • across the rail transport sector
  • by passenger road transport operators and at all related facilities, and
  • by cross-border road transport operators.

 

Correctional centres and remand detention facilities

 

• A composite ministerial directive issued on 28 January has prescribed measures to be taken for the duration of the State of Disaster at each lockdown level and in hotspots.

 

TOURISM

 

• According to Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubanehe, the tourism equity fund launched on 26 January is expected to:
  • assist efforts to ‘crowd-in private sector investment’ for ‘rejuvenating’ the supply side of SA’s tourism market, and
  • accelerate transformation by:
    • facilitating acquisition and new project development by black entrepreneurs, and
    • targeting ‘commercially viable and sustainable’ tourism enterprises ‘with a minimum of 51% black ownership’.
• Small Business Development Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has alluded to funding terms structured to make repayment ‘easy’ over 10 years, with ‘a maximum moratorium of 12 months’.

 

ENVIRONMENT

 

• The new national waste management strategy gazetted on 28 January focuses on the circular economy, among other things with the aim of:
  • ‘addressing the role of vulnerable groups, waste pickers and the informal sector’
  • supporting the participation of women, youth and people living with disabilities
  • ‘increasing participation rates in residential separation-at-source programmes’, and ‘investing in the economies associated with transporting … recyclables to waste processing facilities’.
• The 10-year national botanical gardens expansion strategy approved for implementation at an 18 November 2020 Cabinet meeting has been gazetted.

 

COMPETITION

 

• Automotive aftermarket guidelines were gazetted on 29 January with the aim of curbing practices that:

• ‘exclude small and medium enterprises and historically disadvantaged individuals from becoming approved motor body repairers and … dealers’, and
• limit consumer choice.

 

GENERAL

 

• The political party funding regulations were gazetted on 29 January, in the same document as a presidential proclamation confirming the Act’s 1 April commencement.
• A national framework for developing and drafting ‘evidence based’ public policy has been published.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby