Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu has again been beaten in court over her department’s food distribution regulations.
The Cape Town High Court granted an interdict to the DA that the regulations should not be implemented.
The court also ordered her to give the DA three days if she wants to introduce new regulations. Judge Owen Rogers also ordered Zulu to pay the DA’s legal costs.
This is the second time the DA has successfully dragged her to court over regulations for the distribution of food to people in need during the Covid 19 pandemic.
A month ago, the court ruled the government could not stop the distribution of food during the pandemic.
The regulations stopped by the court Tuesday were published last Thursday.
The DA’s objection was that non-governmental organizations and welfare organizations involved in food aid must adhere to a complex set of rules to operate soup kitchens or distribute food parcels, among other things.
DA spokesman James Lorimer said in a statement Zulu was trying to centralize the distribution of food with the latest regulations. The result would be that the necessary food might not reach many people.
“She might believe her department (social development) is a super-efficient organization with a lot of capacity to start a process to control the distribution of food. This will not happen simply because her department is already struggling to perform its core functions, ”says Lorimer.
