South Africa ends Covid restrictions

South Africa ends COVID restrictions as fifth wave fades | Voice of America - Reuters:

Jun 23, 2022 - "South Africa has repealed COVID-19 rules that made masks mandatory in indoor public spaces, limited the size of gatherings and imposed entry requirements at its borders, the health minister said on Thursday.

"The country has recorded the most coronavirus cases and deaths in Africa, with more than 3.9 million confirmed infections and upwards of 101,000 deaths.... Health minister Joe Phaahla said on Thursday that authorities had noted a decline in cases, hospitalisations and reported deaths and concluded that a limited fifth wave was dissipating.

“'The COVID-19 virus is not yet gone, … we are just stronger than before especially with vaccination,' he told a news conference, urging those eligible for boosters and not yet vaccinated to come forward.... About half of the country’s 40 million adults have received at least one vaccine dose, with 46% fully vaccinated.

"Phaahla said managers of places, such as restaurants, hotels and schools could still require masks on their premises but it was no longer government policy....

Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said scrapping the requirement for travelers to show a vaccination certificate or negative COVID test would help make South Africa more accessible and help the hospitality industry.

"Asked about the country's latest steps, Africa's top public health agency said countries were at different stages of coping with COVID-19 and advised the use of data-driven strategies.

"'We also expect that the protocols will not all be the same during this stage of the pandemic,' the acting director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Ahmed Ogwell Ouma told a briefing. 'We have encouraged them [countries] to use their own data, the evolving situation on the ground and their capacity for surveillance ... to provide any adjustments.'"

Read more: https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-repeals-covid-rules-as-fifth-wave-fades/6629680.html

NY patients win court battles to use ivermectin

Ivermectin Wins in Court Again: For Human Rights | Deseret News - Justus R. Hope, MD:

Apr 19, 2021 - "One dose of Ivermectin was all it took to get 81-year-old John Swanson off the ventilator. John’s wife Sandra could not believe it. His story is remarkably similar to other cases.... 

"Ralph Lorigo is the lawyer who now has won three court orders forcing New York hospitals to administer Ivermectin to dying patients. Incredibly, these three hospitals and their lawyers fought against the patients, arguing they did not have the right to receive the drug despite a valid prescription written by their doctors. In essence, the argument was that they did not have the right to try a potentially life-saving medication.

"In each of the three cases, the New York State Supreme Court Justices sided with the patient, and in each of the three cases, the patients made near-miraculous recoveries after the Ivermectin was given. In each case, these patients were in the Intensive Care Unit on ventilators, unable to breathe on their own, and universally, after the drug was given, they rapidly improved and were able to breathe on their own.

"Judith Smentkiewicz made national news in January when her family hired Lorigo after the hospital refused a fourth dose of Ivermectin..... Attorney Lorigo and his associate Jon F. Minear reported, 'This lady was on a ventilator, literally on her deathbed, before she was given this drug. As far as we’re concerned, the judge’s order saved this woman’s life.'

"The family of Glenna "Sue" Dickinson happened to see a newspaper article of Judith's remarkable story, and they decided to try Ivermectin as well. Sue Dickinson, 65, contracted COVID-19 on January 7, 2021 ...  and was placed on a ventilator on January 17. The hospital staff advised that her chances of survival were about 40 percent [but] refused to give Sue the Ivermectin. Lorigo and Minear  sought an injunction. State Supreme Court Justice Frank Caruso ordered the hospital to provide the Ivermectin. Dickinson, like Swanson, and Smentkiewicz, came off the ventilator and improved as well.... 

"Ivermectin is widely used by physicians, as there are now 51 studies from around the world, with 50 showing clear benefit and one showing neutral.... Experts worldwide have called for the global and systematic use of Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID-19. Physicians have recently written about a profit motive by regulatory agencies and Big Pharma to block cheap, safe, and effective treatments like Ivermectin and HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] in favor of ... vaccines and medicines like Remdesivir.... Remdesivir cost[s] $3,100 per dose [while] Ivermectin costs about $2 per dose. It is safer than Tylenol or most vitamins, says Dr. Pierre Kory of the FLCCC Alliance, a group of expert physicians promoting access and information through a nonprofit organization. Dr. Kory and Mr. Lorigo have teamed up to help other hospitalized patients gain access to the life-saving drug....

"The big problem is that information promoting Ivermectin is often censored or silenced as quickly as it is provided. Facebook, Reddit, Change.org, YouTube, and others have recently taken down posts on Ivermectin citing violation of 'community standards.'  Physicians who employ good judgment and scientific studies are considered violators, as well as those who publish factual accounts of Ivermectin-based recovery stories. A recent article exposed the link between large pharmaceutical corporations and government regulatory agencies who have financial entanglements and massive conflicts of interest.

"The disinformation campaign is evident with the publication of articles attempting to cast Ivermectin in a false light, referring to it as an 'animal dewormer' that might be a 'bad idea' for humans to use. In reality, many drugs are common to both humans and animals for treatment, including antibiotics, antifungals, and antiparasitic agents....

"Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discoveries leading to the development of Ivermectin. In his praise for Ivermectin and its potential to help in the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Omura recently compared Ivermectin to Penicillin, 'one of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century'.... Ivermectin has already been adopted by 25 percent of the world’s countries to prevent and treat COVID-19.... However, censorship, corruption, hospital lawyers, and disinformation campaigns have continued to stand in the way of its widespread acceptance in the United States. Many have never even heard of it.

"Ivermectin recently won in court in South Africa after a protracted legal battle. Ralph Lorigo has now won his third State Supreme Court Injunction in New York. Will legal strategies also be required in the US to gain FDA approval for Ivermectin to treat COVID-19?"

Read more: https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/ivermectin-wins-in-court-again-for-human-rights/article_98d26958-a13a-11eb-a698-37c06f632875.html

Some countries allow ivermectin use to treat Covid

Use of parasite medication to treat coronavirus patients approved in Slovakia | Slovak Spectator: 

January 27, 2021 - "Ivermectin, a medication used to treat many types of parasite infestations, can now be used to treat coronavirus patients in hospitals and obtained from pharmacies with a prescription. The Health Ministry approved the therapeutic use of this medication for six months. It will be used with other treatments, its spokesperson Zuzana Eliášová said, as reported by the TASR newswire.

"The medication can be legally imported to Slovakia and given to patients. With such a step, the ministry fulfilled the request of the association of Slovak anaesthetists, the Denník N daily reported. Until now, Ivermectin was officially approved to be used only for animals, which is why people generally buy it abroad."

Read more: https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22583299/use-of-parasite-medication-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-approved-in-slovakia.html

South Africa Allows Use of Parasite Drug in Covid Patients | Bloomberg - Janice Kew:

January 27, 2021 - "South African authorities approved the use of a drug used to control parasites in humans and livestock to treat coronavirus patients. The medicine, known as ivermectin, will be allowed for use on compassionate grounds in a controlled-access program, the head of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority said Wednesday. Medical practitioners who apply to the regulator to use the drug will be considered on a case-by-case basis, Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela said.

"Ivermectin has been used for decades to treat livestock infested with parasitic worms, while in humans it’s used as a topical ointment for diseases including skin infections and inflammation. The World Health Organization has suggested the drug has encouraging effects on coronavirus, though like other regulators it’s also said the medication hasn’t been properly evaluated. The drug won’t be limited to patients with known Covid-19 co-morbidities, Semete-Makokotlela said.

"The regulator is already seeing widespread use of ivermectin in an emerging black market, as South Africa grapples with a second wave of coronavirus infections that’s resulted in hospital admissions soaring and a shortage of critical-care beds. Allowing controlled use of the drug will help the regulator monitor its use and enable the body to collect much-needed safety data."

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-27/south-africa-allows-use-of-parasite-drug-to-treat-covid-patients

Zimbabwe OKs use of Ivermectin after officials' deaths | Anadolu Agency - John Cassim:

January 28, 2021 - "Zimbabwe has approved the use and import of the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients. 

"'In these difficult times of COVID-19 treatment, we have to be careful to protect patients as well as not to deny them effective treatment regimes,” said a statement by the Health Ministry addressed to the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ). 'It is in this regard, the authority is hereby granted for you to proceed to allow importation and use of these medicines under the supervision and guidance you outlined. Ivermectin can be evaluated for both treatment and prophylaxis,' the ministry said.

"This ministry’s decision comes a few days after the deaths of three cabinet ministers and several top government officials from COVID-19 in a short period of time. Owing to the fact that Ivermectin was not registered for use in Zimbabwe, COVID-19 patients ended up using the Ivermectin product meant for animals....

"Two weeks ago, the medicines control body threatened to arrest anyone found to be administering Ivermectin to humans."

Read more: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/zimbabwe-oks-use-of-ivermectin-after-officials-deaths/2125442

Lockdowns enforced with brutality in Africa

COVID-19: Security forces in Africa brutalizing civilians under lockdown | Deutsche Welle:

April 20, 2020 - "Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya are some of the countries that security agencies have used brutal means to keep people off the streets. The brutality contradicts some of the measures put in place that allow people to go out only for essential purposes, such as buying food and medication....

"According to Nigeria's Human Rights Commission, security operatives have killed at least eighteen civilians while trying to enforce the state-imposed lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19. The rights group added that those killed by security forces so far outnumber patients who have died from the coronavirus in the country....

"Nigerian police denied any wrongdoing and directed all complaints to its communications department.... 'We ensure that the police we deploy adheres strictly to the police code of conduct and respect for the rights of Nigerian citizens,' Mohammed Adamu, Nigeria's Inspector General of Police (IGP), said....

"But Ryan Cummings, a security analyst at Signal Risk, a political and security risk management consultancy, disputes the IGP's defense line.... According to Cummings, the brutality of police and security forces against civilians in the northeast has also been documented by rights groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. He says security forces often mistreat civilians with impunity under the pretext of fighting Boko Haram and authorities turn a blind eye....

"In South Africa, videos of police brutality against violators of the lockdown that was imposed on March 26 went viral on social media platforms. Several reports of torture and murder of citizens accused of breaching the lockdown regulations are now under investigation. Some of the videos show soldiers kicking people and forcing them to roll on the ground. Others were forced to frog-march until they reach their homes.

"But perhaps the death of Collins Koza, a resident of Alexandra Township, [most] angered many South Africans. DW correspondent in Johannesburg Thuso Khumalo reports that soldiers entered his house and beat him for drinking beer and having some bottles in his fridge.... [Koza] died three hours later after the beating.... In a separate incident, an entire family was assaulted for having a get-together outside their house.... So far, eight people have been killed as a result, and at least 200 cases of police brutality recorded....

"Cummings partly blames the police minister Bheki Cele's recent comments that urged his force to use highhandedness while enforcing the lockdown. 'Do not be nice to suspects' he urged on his men and women and gave the green light to destroy private property if they were selling alcohol, according to local reports.

"Cummings also believes that there's a deep mistrust between South Africans and the security organs that stems back in the apartheid era. 'There are indicators that the brutal enforcement might keep the people off the streets but further dent the relationship and social contract between the security organs and the people they are meant to serve.'"

Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-security-forces-in-africa-brutalizing-civilians-under-lockdown/a-53192163

Cannabis prohibitions struck down in South Africa

Top South African court OKs private use of cannabis - CNN - Mitchell McCluskey & Bukola Adebayo:

September 19, 2018 = "South Africa's Constitutional Court approved the private use and cultivation of cannabis Tuesday....

"In a unanimous ruling hailed by activists campaigning for the legalization of marijuana, judges declared unconstitutional three sections of the Constitution that prohibited cannabis consumption, possession and cultivation. The ruling says Parliament should change the law within 24 months.

"Selling and smoking cannabis, popularly known as 'dagga' in South Africa, in public places remains illegal.

"South Africa joins a growing list of African countries embracing the legal use of marijuana. Last year, Lesotho became the first African country to offer legal licenses to grow it. In April, Zimbabwe's government legalized cultivation for medicinal and scientific purposes.

"Cannabis is the most widely used drug in the world, according to the UN's 2018 World Drug Report, which estimates that 3.9% of the global population between the ages of 15 and 64 used it at least once in 2016. The majority of the increases in recent years were in Africa and Asia.

"South Africa's Dagga Party won a court case last year permitting cannabis smoking in homes, paving the way for Tuesday's ruling. Jeremy Acton, the party's leader, said it will continue to lobby for legislation that includes the public use of cannabis. In his view, laws regulating marijuana use should not be stricter than those for tobacco and alcohol use."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/19/health/south-africa-cannabis-private-use-intl/index.html
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Libertarian land reform in South Africa

Restoring Property Rights to Generational Apartheid Victims - Atlas Network:

"Maria Mothupi held the official deed to her land for the first time.... Until she was 99 years old, she had never experienced living in her own home or in a home legally owned by her family, because she was only two years old when the 1913 Land Act banned land ownership by black people in South Africa — a law that continues to have consequences today, despite its repeal more than two decades ago....

"This unlikely happy chapter toward the end of a hard life came about thanks to the Free Market Foundation (FMF) of South Africa’s Khaya Lam (My House) Land Reform project. FMF’s pilot project focused on the Ngwathe municipal area of the Free State province, where FMF Director Eustace Davie estimates that there are about 20,000 houses for which the ownership rights have not been documented and registered.

"The Khaya Lam project has already provided resources to carry out the conversion of some of these properties — out of an estimated 5 to 7 million that are eligible countrywide — to freehold title ownership.... Progress, however, has been slow.... Distrust, ambiguity, and prohibitive costs have all worked together to prevent a more rapid transfer of otherwise available titles. Through bulk processing and other cost reduction measures, FMF has reduced the cost from about $378 to $122 per title deed.

"The major purpose of the Ngwathe pilot project was to determine the most rapid and cost-efficient method of registering the rights of the homeowners and placing them in possession of title deeds that prove their rights and enable them to trade with their property legally, in any way they please.... More than 800 of the Ngwathe houses had either already been converted or were in the process of being converted by the end of October 2015, and by January 2016 FMF had 300 conversions sponsored in Cape Town and another 60 in the town of Grabouw.

"'Our task is to make everyone in the country aware of how the country will change for the better if we can extinguish the effects of one of the greatest crimes of apartheid: depriving black South Africans of property rights for 78 years,' Davie said. 'Calls for information are coming in from all over the country'....

"FMF is one of Atlas Network’s more-than-450 global partners working to restore and strengthen property rights.... Liberty Institute in New Delhi, India ... developed an innovative project that provides villagers with GPS devices and satellite mapping technology in order to prove their farming claims to the government and establish legal title to their own ancestral lands..... [I]in Honduras, where some believe uncertainty in property rights accounts for as much as 4 percent of their prohibitive loan interest rates, Atlas Network partner Fundación Eléutera has worked during the past year to help government leaders transform an ongoing and costly land titling digitalization effort by using blockchain technology....

"By protecting property rights, FMF through its Khaya Lam land titling project and these other projects by Atlas Network partners all strengthen individual liberty and prosperity."

Read more: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/poverty/stories/restoring-property-rights-to-generational-apartheid-victims
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Uber banned in London

London's Uber Ban Shines Light on the Sorry State of the Rule of Law - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world:

October 2, 2017 - "Transport for London (TfL), the government agency responsible for regulating transportation in the UK’s capital, recently decided to revoke Uber’s license to operate within Greater London. While many advocates of free choice and innovative technology have lambasted the decision as bad for the poor and (in the words of Chris Philp, MP) 'anti-free market,' the root cause of the problem — discretionary powers — remains unaddressed....

"British jurist Albert Venn Dicey, known for his 1885 work Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, [wrote] that the Rule of Law means 'the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even wide discretionary authority on the part of the government' .... In other words, the law cannot be implemented arbitrarily according to the official’s own whims but must be implemented according to legal principles such as reasonableness, rationality, effectiveness, and proportionality, to name but a few.

"The Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act of 1998 ... provides that no 'private hire' operator, such as Uber, may operate in London without a license. To obtain a license, a private hire operator must apply to TfL. TfL, in turn, has absolute (or arbitrary) discretion in who it does or does not grant a license to. Section 3(4) provides that a license may be granted only if 'such conditions as may be prescribed and such other conditions as the [TfL] may think fit.' The remainder of the Act is littered with similar provisions giving TfL unjustifiable amounts of power to decide what it 'requires' from prospective and re-applying private hire operators to have them licensed....

"TfL provides an explanation for the revocation of Uber’s license. Among other things, it is not satisfied with Uber’s 'approach' to reporting crimes and how Uber obtains medical certificates....  It also criticises Uber for using security software Greyball to obstruct regulatory authorities. Greyball apparently enabled Uber to identify potentially-unwanted passengers and make it more difficult for them to book a ride....

"The UK is not the only country adopting a flexible approach to the Rule of Law when it comes to suppressing disruptive technologies. South Africa’s transport minister also recently played with the fanciful notion that he is able to create law from thin air by simply making a press statement and require Uber drivers – who operate differently from regulated taxi services in the country – to obtain permits. Section 1(c) of South Africa’s constitution, however, provides for the supremacy of the Rule of Law, and despite government’s ignorance of this provision, ministers can’t simply legislate from the sidelines.

"The UK and South African governments’ decisions to repress Uber, most likely to appease local taxi unions, comes at the expense of consumers. While many argue that Uber has flouted laws all over the globe by working essentially as taxis — but not being subject to the same regulation as other taxis — the issue is not Uber, but the laws themselves. Uber has truly revolutionized transportation by providing a quick, mostly-affordable method of getting a ride somewhere. Tourists no longer need to struggle over language barriers and subject themselves to haggling by uncooperative taxi drivers, because the app does it all for them. Laws which hinder this kind of innovation should be done away with, and there is no doubt that other taxi services would also benefit without excessive regulation.

"Government’s incessant desire to be in control of everything illustrates the whole point of the existence of the Rule of Law: to ensure tempered, reasoned, and constrained governance. The UK is the birthplace of the modern understanding of the Rule of Law, and it would be wise for it to live up to its tenets. A good place to start would be to repeal or fundamentally revise the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/londons-uber-ban-shines-light-on-the-sorry-state-of-the-rule-of-law/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
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Libertarian elected mayor of Johannesburg

Libertarian Herman Mashaba elected mayor of Johannesburg - Globe and Mail - Geoffrey York:

September 16, 2016 - "Herman Mashaba is a millionaire tycoon, an ideological libertarian and self-proclaimed 'capitalist crusader' who lectures his listeners about the evils of big government and minimum wage. He is also, shockingly, the newly elected mayor of South Africa’s biggest city....

"Less than a month after winning office as Johannesburg’s mayor, Mr. Mashaba is already energetically putting his free-market ideas into action. He is distributing thousands of title deeds to impoverished residents, trying to create a new class of landowners. He is plotting with private developers to turn the city into a vast construction site, and he is pledging to use small businesses to slash the unemployment rate....

"Mr. Mashaba is probably the only avowed libertarian to become mayor of a major African city. He’s even more of a free-market fundamentalist than his political party, the Democratic Alliance. The DA supports a minimum wage, for example, while Mr. Mashaba scathingly denounces it as 'an evil system to deprive poor uneducated people of the opportunity to advance.'

His highest value, he says, is 'individual freedom.' He rails against the 'culture of dependency' and excessive regulation in South Africa. 'I’m just asking the government to leave us alone,' he says.

"When a Globe and Mail interviewer suggests that he must be a lonely voice as the only libertarian mayor in the country, he laughs. 'I was born alone. My life is not shaped by other people.'

"The son of a domestic worker who was widowed when he was 2 years old, he grew up in poverty in a black township near Pretoria. In the apartheid era, when the white-minority regime made it difficult for blacks to enter business, Mr. Mashaba overcame the obstacles and made his fortune by creating a hair-products empire under the 'Black Like Me' brand name....

"Until two years ago, Mr. Mashaba had never joined a political party. He finally joined the DA in 2014, angered by the corruption scandals and race-baiting rhetoric of President Jacob Zuma. But if anyone had suggested he might end up as mayor of a city of five million people, he says, he would have asked them what they were smoking. Political pundits sneered at his weaknesses as a campaigner, predicting he would never become mayor.

"The ANC won 44 per cent of the Johannesburg vote last month, six percentage points more than the DA, but Mr. Mashaba became the 'accidental mayor' with the support of a third party, the Economic Freedom Fighters. The EFF, ironically, is even more left wing than the ruling party. Its leaders, portraying the DA as a white-dominated party, said Mr. Mashaba must be someone who hates his own skin colour. But the EFF is virulently opposed to the ANC and determined to unseat it anywhere, even at the cost of supporting a right-wing party. In the end, the ANC lost control of three of the country’s biggest cities."

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/libertarian-herman-mashaba-elected-mayor-of-johannesburg/article31942363/
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Libertarian Party of South Africa founded

The launch of SA's Libertarian Party: herding cats in time for 2014 | Daily Maverick - Ivo Vegter:

October 20, 2013 - "Those who believe in individual freedom on economic and social matters, also known as libertarians, are notoriously hard to organise. A new political party in South Africa aims to unite and focus the political opposition to authoritarianism and government waste, but the signs at its launch were not auspicious.

"On 20 October 2013, a sunny Sunday morning, a new political party was formed in the small Karoo town of Prince Albert. The Libertarian Party of South Africa (LiPSA) had, at its formation, a membership of 17 people....

"At the time of writing, the party had collected 150 out of 500 signatures required on its Deed of Foundation to form a party eligible to contest national elections, but the founders were not sure by what date the registration process had to be complete.

"LiPSA espouses the principles of individual freedom, as set against what its manifesto calls “the omnipotent state.... The party hopes to exploit the opportunity of a national election to focus the activities of various groupings that espouse principles of political and economic freedom, and views itself as a counterweight to what it considers the increasingly authoritarian and corrupt policies of the political establishment."

Read more: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-10-20-the-launch-of-sas-libertarian-party-herding-cats-in-time-for-2014/#.UmWeuHCsiSo
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