The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has filed an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court to overturn the government’s “irrational and unlawful” national state of disaster in connection with the country’s load-shedding crisis.
Outa said in a statement on Thursday, after filing court papers, that it believed the decision to declare the state of disaster was “irrational, arbitrary and unlawful” and the result of the government’s self-inflicted crisis. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the decision during his State of the Nation Address on February 8.
The respondents in the application include the President, the head of the National Disaster Management Centre, the Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, the Minister of Public Enterprises, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, and Eskom Holdings. The sixth to eighth respondents are cited as interested parties.
Outa executive director Stefanie Fick said the decision was unnecessary because laws already existed to enable urgent action to address the energy crisis.
“Years of state capture, mismanagement, and a dysfunctional culture cannot be a rational justification for the declaration of a national state of disaster,” Fick said.
The state of disaster granted extraordinary powers to officials to make far-reaching decisions without parliamentary oversight, which was a real concern in light of the extensive looting enabled by emergency procurement during the Covid-19 state of disaster, Fick said.
“If the decision to declare a national state of disaster due to this self-created crisis is allowed to stand, it will open the floodgates for further such disasters to be declared in various other sectors that suffered from similar dysfunction, mismanagement, and corruption. Declaring a national state of disaster will, in effect, become a tool for the government to circumvent accountability,” Fick said.
“We are bringing this application because Outa will not stand by when government grants itself extraordinary powers with reduced oversight to deal with a self-created energy crisis.”
In its urgent application, Outa asks the court to review and set aside the decisions to classify the electricity constraints as a national disaster and to declare the national state of disaster.
