FAN to government: How much taxpayers’ money did you waste defending your Covid-19 hubris in court?

FAN to government: How much taxpayers’ money did you waste defending your Covid-19 hubris in court?

The Freedom Advocacy Network (FAN) has sent a request for access to information to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to determine how much the South African government spent on defending its lockdown regulations between March 2020 and April 2022.

For two years South Africans were subjected to draconic regulations seeking to curb the spread of Covid-19. Numerous think tanks, organisations, and individual citizens took the South African government to court to challenge many of these regulations. Many of these challenges ended in losses for the government.

But litigation is not a cheap thing to undertake. FAN therefore requests the Department to disclose just how many challenges its regulations faced, and how much taxpayers’ money was spent on defending these challenges in court.

Says Hermann Pretorius, managing director of FAN: “As we enter the post-pandemic era, it is important to know how desperate the South African government was to defend its often illogical and destructive lockdown policies. The perverse descendant of the lockdown-mania, the current health regulations, are already being challenged in court by no less than four civil-liberty organisations. Given South Africa’s precarious fiscal position and the notoriety of government for wasting money, South Africans deserve to know how much it cost them for the government to defend its hubristic hunger for power in court after court.”

Adds Pretorius: “Looking ahead to the newest health regulations, the extension of the perverse powers the government gave itself under the guise of Covid-19, we cannot afford to let this sort of recklessness continue. These regulations, like the government’s Covid-19 hubris, will cost our country dearly, in economic and fiscal terms. South Africans will, as ever, be expected by power hungry politicians and government officials to foot the bill. It’s time for South Africans to join FAN in saying ‘no’ to such arrogance and wastage.”

The request for access to information is attached.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Hermann Pretorius

Director at Freedom Advocacy Network

Cell: +27 79 875 4290

www.f-an.net