COVID in South Africa shows the limits of using courts to fight political battles

JUSTIN BROWN|

THE COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our daily lives. Some of these changes are immediately visible in the everyday wearing of face masks, in the bottles of hand sanitiser found on shop counters, and in the careful spacing of long queues. Others, though, are less obvious.

They take place in the structures of the legal system that shapes our relationships to one another and to the state.

In the recent past, as I’ve argued in my book, South Africa’s Insurgent Citizens the post-apartheid constitution’s emphasis on the need for state action to be both rational (in the legal sense) and grounded in the fundamentals of the Bill of Rights, has meant that the law and legal activism have become political tools. These tools have often been used by poor communities and civil society bodies to pursue their goals. Attempts such as these to pursue political ends