A New Medical Apartheid: "Sick Until Proven Healthy"

Not three decades after apartheid ended, the South African government is proposing amendments to the National Health Act of 2003’s 2017 regulations that would resurrect apartheid in a new form.

Activist Sabelo Sibanda explains the proposed amendments:

"These regulations basically declare a scenario where everyone will end up in one of three categories where you are either deemed to be a case, or you are considered a suspect, or, alternatively, you are considered as one who has been in contact with someone who is a case.

And once you fall into any one of those three categories, this is what this means to you. Government says, ‘You may not refuse to be medically examined,’ whereby the medical examination process is whatever government will determine.

Second to that, you may not refuse to be put in quarantine or put in isolation. And the requirements for quarantine and isolation are such that the majority of the people of South Africa will not be able to self-quarantine so they have to be put in a state institution.

Further to that, and most critical, is that you may not refuse to take whatever medication that the government says you should take. Your freedom—which is supposed to be guaranteed and protected by the same act in as far as the right to be informed—is taken away. You are caught in a situation whereby government has full control.

Once you are put in this isolation space, this quarantine space, you don’t have the ability to determine when and how you get out. It will be up to government to decide.

So now the country of South Africa will be under a permanent state of disaster where masking will be permanent, where social distancing is permanent, through the National Health Act.”