Facts Only

Let’s work with the facts.

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

God wins.

[mark 🇿🇦 @markmywords]

The Great Lockdown Records Cover-Up: When Ministers Play Hide-and-Seek with Court Orders

South Africa faced one of the world’s harshest COVID lockdowns. Tobacco and alcohol were banned. The economy was kneecapped. Millions of jobs vanished. Small businesses were crushed. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma signed the disaster declarations.

Years later the government still withholds full decision-making records. Sakeliga has pursued them for nearly six years. Court orders have been ignored or only partially met. Ministers change; the files remain locked.

This is not mere foot-dragging. It shows how power avoids accountability for painful, controversial and economically damaging decisions.

Timeline

December 2020: Sakeliga files a PAIA request for all reports, deliberations, advice, emails and minutes behind the state of disaster, its extensions and lockdown rules. Refused.

August 2021: Sakeliga approaches the Pretoria High Court.

9 November 2022: Court orders full disclosure. Deadline set.

December 2022: Only a thin index of public documents and some tobacco-ban papers arrives. Key deliberative records are missing. Sakeliga alleges contempt.

January 2023: Contempt process begins; jail is possible.

March 2023: Cabinet reshuffle. Thembi Nkadimeng replaces Dlamini-Zuma at COGTA. Proceedings pause.

2023–early 2024: Stonewalling continues. Both the new minister and Dlamini-Zuma (personally) are joined in the contempt application.

January 2024: Formal High Court contempt application filed.

September–October 2024: Case becomes opposed. Government claims records cannot be fully located because the former minister acted. Dlamini-Zuma files a two-page affidavit claiming compliance. Sakeliga rejects it.

2025: Case still in progress under new minister Velenkosini Hlabisa, also joined personally. Critical 2020 extension records remain outstanding.

August 2026: Nearly six years after the PAIA request and almost four years after the court order, the full deliberative record is still not public.

Accountability delayed is accountability denied. When the state can make life-altering decisions in secret and treat court orders as optional, something is broken. Sakeliga continues to push. The people who lost livelihoods deserve the paper trail.

@Sakeliga
@DlaminiZuma
@GovernmentZA
@OUTASA
@Abramjee

[Jackson @jackson_rem]

South Africans are paying ridiculous amounts for electricity in a country that literally produces electricity and exports some of it to our neighbours.
Tariffs keep climbing. Municipalities add their markups. Paying households keep absorbing increase after increase, yet electricity somehow becomes more expensive every year.
At some point we have to ask what exactly our electricity bills are funding.
Are we paying for the electricity we actually consume… or are paying customers being forced to carry the cost of municipal debt, illegal connections, electricity theft, failing infrastructure and decades of mismanagement?
Because electricity should never feel like a luxury in a country that produces it.

[Jay Anderson @TheProjectUnity]

To be unvaccinated during covid was to be:

Hated, pressured, vilified, mocked, punished, ostracised and scapegoated.

And yet, despite all of this...

We were 100% right the whole time.

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@GuntherEagleman That’s a very small package 🤣🤣

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@Nedbank Ok I will advise her to dm you

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

Just spoke to a friend re-illegal actions of @Nedbank after she transferred money by mistake into an inactive account where debt has prescribed. @nedbank not responding/reversing the money. it’s unlawful - debt has fully prescribed under the Prescription Act. Under Section 126B

[Farai Mazhindu @FaraiMazhindu]

Elon Musk has challenged the South African establishment over its racially discriminatory laws more aggressively than any local media house or political movement ever has.

This unprecedented move deeply shocked and offended ANC cadres, who will never forget the humiliation.

He dismantled a multi-decade narrative of racist laws disguised as compliance in a way no local force has ever dared to achieve.

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@Nedbank I have sent a dm

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@skerplaz @Magda_Wierzycka Except we now have to declare upon leaving the country!! No one does that

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@Sizekhaya_RF Just saw that last night’s PB only rolled by R4m 😒😒😒 Looks like the nation has lost interest and for good reason. Too expensive, no one likes the cascading, jackpots advertised are not paid out in full, the list goes on. Somehow the devil we knew was better

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@HazelAppleyard She be so teeny

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@robbystarbuck She’s always going to be Ellen, isn’t she?! 😂😂😂😂😂 Try as she might, she is what she is… a chick

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@SoyRubik Mario

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@JebraFaushay It’s Ozempic face! So obvious

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@sevdaloji Too easy

[Facts Only @kate_sheraton]

@Not_the_Bee Literally a chick with bushy eyebrows

[Leonarda Jonie @Leonardaisfunny]

He’s sitting on the wrong side of the desk. They don’t even know how to use a desk. 🤦‍♀️

[maria | fig🇩🇴 @figtion]

I’m sorry but if you don’t think a billionaire shutting down one of the busiest streets in nyc ON THE 4TH OF JULY so she can have a wedding in a castle built inside a basketball court, is not the epitome of out of touch and “let them eat cake” then you just don’t care about people.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Taylor Swift now believes in walls, guns, and police. Oh, and straight marriage.

Welcome to the far-right.