The Premier of the Eastern Cape, Oscar Mabuyane, has issued a statement on weddings, traditional and religious ceremonies.
Here is his statement:
We have seen incidents where South African Police Service
Officers were enforcing the regulations of the lockdown throughout the Eastern
Cape Province in relation to stopping the traditional and religious ceremonies.
The work of these SAPS members is commendable. We
thank them for ensuring that where they get reports of people breaking any of
the regulations gazetted for the lockdown, they enforce the regulations and
effect arrests.
Equally, we want to rebuke alleged incidents of brutality
reported to have been meted against the people of the province by some Police
Officers and Soldiers in the province and in other parts of the country.
The duty of law enforcement and the army is to ensure
compliance with legal regulations and not to further break the same
regulations.
We want to call on the people of the province to avoid
breaking the law by adhering to all the regulations that we have put in place
to regulate our lives and activities during the lockdown period.
Government has laid down the regulations saying that there
must be no traditional ceremonies, weddings, religious events, sport activities
and any social gatherings taking place during the lockdown with the exception
of funerals attended by only 50 people per funeral. We are concerned that
some members of our society in urban and rural communities ignore these
regulations by continuing to hold these events and gatherings.
We want to bring to the attention of all the people of
the province that these regulations are in place to protect them from
contracting the virus. Each person in the province must respect these
regulations by adhering to them at all times to avoid arrest and
prosecution.
Going forward, we have now directed that each of the
Ward Councillors in the province must inform people in their wards that are
organising or planning to organise these events to wait until the lockdown is
lifted by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
We expect that the work that has been done by the
South African Police Service Officers in other parts of the province will serve
as a lesson to people that were still planning to organise such events to stop
going ahead until the lockdown is lifted by the President.
We want Councillors to spread this message to the
communities in the wards where they lead so that we don’t see food such as meat
and traditional beer being thrown away again as part of enforcing these
regulations.
We are cautiously optimistic that all the people of the
province will adhere to these regulations because no one wants to experience
what was experienced by those people who did not adhere to the regulations.
Their refusal to adhere to the regulations led to law enforcement officers
ending their gatherings and throwing away the food that was prepared by these
families. Surely no one wants to experience that again, no one wants to
waste their money by organising events when they know they should not be doing
so during the national lockdown.
Adhering to all the regulations of the national lockdown is
for the benefit of all the people of this province and our country. Failure to
adhere to the regulations could lead to increase in the number of people
infected by the coronavirus. This would reverse the gains we have made from the
day the national lockdown started.
We appreciate the compliance and adherence by millions of
the people of our province who still continue to live life according to the
regulations of the national lockdown.
It is such law-abiding citizens that make it possible for us
to flatten the curve by staying at home.
