CSSR research contributes to another successful court case brought against the government

The Gauteng High Court has handed down a judgement in a case brought by an NGO, SA Childcare, and others against the national Minister of Social Development and her provincial counterparts. The High Court ordered the Minister to resume the payment of subsidies to Early Childhood Development centres in order to allow them to resume their feeding schemes for pre-school children. Only in the Western Cape had the provincial government ensured that these pre-school feeding schemes continued under the lockdown. As in the case brought by Equal Education against the Minister of Basic Education over school feeding, the court sharply reprimanded the government for its failure to fulfil its statutory obligations. A punitive cost order was awarded against the government. Jeremy Seekings, the director of the CSSR, was one of several researchers who submitted affidavits in support of SA Childcare. Jeremy's affidavit documented the state's failure to feed children under the lockdown first imposed in March. It extended the work used in the Equal Education case (and published as Working Paper 455).