Political parties welcome gradual easing of nationwide lockdown

Political parties have welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of a gradual easing of the nationwide lockdown in curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Addressing the nation on Thursday, Ramaphosa said that on May 1st 2020 the country will enter alert level four of the lockdown, which means some activities will be allowed with extreme caution.

Most of the political parties have expressed their support of the move by government to phase in the lifting of the nationwide lockdown to reopen some sectors of the economy.

The DA’s interim leader John Steenhuisen says that any phased lifting of lockdown restrictions, should be accompanied by massive testing, tracing, tracking and publishing of reliable data

“This is precisely what we’ve been calling for in our smart lockdown plan released 10 days ago and it’s encouraging to be able to see how we’ve able to cooperate with government in this way and to know we are on the same page in facing this daunting challenge we’ll obviously wait the details but it’s also critical that phased lifting of the lockdown is accompanied by a massive increase in testing, tracing and tracking and that the publishing of this data is prioritise this is important because South Africans need to know where we are at in term of the various phases and it informs how we transition between those phases.”

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa says this move will resuscitate the economy.

“The UDM welcomes the country’s road map back to normality this balancing act will no doubt lead to resuscitation of our economy so that we don’t become the country of consumers let us go back and do this in an orderly fashion.”

The African Transformation Movement (ATM) expressed its satisfaction with the maintained closure of borders.

ATM NEC Member Sibusiso Mncwabe explains: “We welcome the fact that our borders will continue to be closed because we know as a country that we’ve got porous borders we are happy that they will continue to be closed down up until we are able to defeat this pandemic we’ll be expecting as the President has said that the ministers gives us a clear picture as to what will happen going forward but we agree that we can’t be reckless in dealing with the phasing out of this lockdown we, therefore, accept what the President has said.”