High court ruling dismissing Gauteng DSD's urgent interdict bid welcomed

The Nisaa Institute for Women’s Development and the Gauteng Care Crisis Committee (GCCC) have welcomed the dismissal of the Gauteng department of social development's interdict bid against an alleged strike planned at its Joburg offices this coming week.

The department had filed an urgent application seeking to bar 455 non-governmental organisations [NGOs] registered with it, alongside those not registered with it “and/or any person” seeking to embark on a strike at its offices.

This comes after a poster was apparently circulated on a planned three-day sit-in at the department's various offices by members of these organisations in protest against the panels set up by the department late last year to “adjudicate which NPOs will or won't qualify for subsidies”.

Nisaa, which opposed the application, and the GCCC in an answering affidavit confirmed that the latter had reached out to the department in January to get an update on the issue, and when no response came from them, met earlier this month to discuss this and “additional steps they could pursue to obtain certainty and options available to them”. 

“On the evening of March 4 [date of the meeting], one of the members of GCCC received a poster that is the subject of the [ now failed] urgent application. This member forwarded the poster to the GCCC WhatsApp group,” they said.

On March 13, they received the notice of the department's planned legal action.

The GCCC in a statement released on Saturday confirmed that the department's application was dismissed after it was found to be “vague”, “wide” and “irresponsible”.

“The department’s flimsy and misguided application was based on a poster circulated on WhatsApp ... suspiciously, the poster provided no details of the sit-in’s organisers, the times for the sit-in, or contact information for those seeking to make enquiries about the proposed action.

“The department made no real attempt to investigate the source of the poster nor establish how the 455 NGOs, other NGOs not registered with it or any other private individuals, were linked to the poster. They certainly did not consult with NGOs to enquire about the poster, its origins and the proposed sit-in [but] instead, rushed to court to impugn the integrity of the sector as a whole by claiming they required protection from violent and intimidating organisations hell-bent on interfering with their adjudication of their subsidy applications.

“Even more concerningly, they sought to interdict organisations from holding future meetings or actions around their subsidies. Members of the GCCC, who had not planned any sit-in at the department's offices, were shocked by this attempt to tarnish their reputations, as well as the shoddy and unprocedural way in which the department sought to obtain the interdict.”

GCCC said it viewed the department's move, especially in the context of looming cuts to the department's budget, as “little more than a thinly-veiled attempt to silence NGO concerns around the cuts”.

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