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At the core of this appeal is the constitutional validity of s 27 of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 (the DMA). The constitutional challenge occurred in the context of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, which was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation. In one of several judgments in which this Court had occasion to pronounce on the Covid-19 pandemic, it said:

‘The seriousness and the magnitude of the threat to life brought about by the pandemic cannot be exaggerated. It is not melodramatic to say that it posed, and continues to pose, the biggest threat to this country since the Spanish influenza pandemic of the immediate post-World War I years a century ago. It had the potential, and continues to have the potential, to cause devastation on a scale that, only a short while ago, people could not have begun to imagine. Drastic measures were required and an excess of caution was called for, especially given the limited knowledge about Covid-19, even among experts in the field of epidemiology.’