Lobby group AfriForum has asked the Minister of Co-Operative Governance & Traditional Affairs (Cogta), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to overturn a directive forcing people who test positive for Covid-19 to be held in government quarantine camps.

They have given the government 48 hours to do so or face legal action, says a TimesLIVE report.

In the letter written by lawyer Daniël Eloff, of Hurter Spies, AfriForum said it was concerned that people who tested positive for Covid-19 – or were suspected of having contracted the virus – ‘will not be entitled to self-isolate to stop the spread of the disease and will instead be forcibly placed into quarantine at state facilities’.

AfriForum complained that amendments to regulations to prevent an escalation of the State of Disaster announced on 25 March empowered the state to prosecute anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 but refuses to be taken to a government-run quarantine camp.

‘It also empowers the state to forcibly quarantine people in government camps, even in cases where these people have the means to self-isolate and intend to do so.’

The letter to the Minister follows an announcement by KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu, who said the provincial government had resolved to discard the policy of self-isolation for people who test positive for Covid-19.

Simelane-Zulu said effective from Sunday, anyone testing positive would be kept and monitored at state-identified quarantine sites.

The declaration came as KZN Premier Sihle Zikalala announced a stricter enforcement of lockdown legislature after it emerged that the province had the highest Covid-19 death toll in the country, notes TimesLIVE.

AfriForum said the amended regulations ‘grant overly broad powers to enforcement officers and the state to curb the infection of Covid-19’ and were a ‘gross intrusion and violation of the rights’ of people infected with the diseases or suspected of being infected with the diseases.

The organisation asked that the Minister also issue a proviso to the regulations that people who test positive and who have the means to self-isolate must be allowed to continue with self-isolation without the threat of being forcibly removed to a government-run quarantine camp, and that the necessary government structures should be informed of this change in the regulations.

Ernst Roets, AfriForum's head of policy and action, said: ‘The decision … is a violation of the most basic freedoms and dignities of people and amounts to a measure that can in no circumstances be justifiable in any democracy that is governed by the principles of freedom, justice and the rule of law,’ said Roets.

Full TimesLIVE report