Flash Briefing: Shell seismic survey fears dismissed as ‘poppycock’; SIU report into PPE corruption released; Calls to end lockdown grow louder

• Shell’s South African partner dismissed fears that a seismic survey for offshore oil and gas could endanger marine life, calling it “poppycock”, while warning that halting the process could leave the country entirely dependent on crude imports. There is no evidence that seismic testing has “had any biologically significant impact on any marine populations in areas in which surveys have been conducted anywhere in the world,” Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) said in an open letter published on its website. “Some people may believe the most important social contribution they can make is to inhibit oil exploration in South Africa, but their success will not end our demand for oil,” HCI said. “It will simply leave us completely dependent on importing it at huge cost to our foreign reserves.”
• A Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report into the state’s spending on its response to the Covid-19 pandemic was made public on Tuesday. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office announced he had authorised that the final report on the SIU’s probe into more than 5,400 government contracts be made available to the public. The unit investigated 5,467 contracts, valued at R14.3bn, awarded to 3,066 service providers. Investigations linked to 4,549 contracts have been finalised, with 2,803 of those agreements found to have been irregular. This amounted to 62% of the finalised investigations being deemed irregular. The SIU identified assets and money totalling R551.5m that needed to be recovered on the basis of its probes. So far, assets and money totalling just over R34m has been recovered. 
• South African scientists and medical experts are adding their voices to the call for the government to end the country’s national state of disaster and lockdown regulations, saying that the world is entering a new phase of dealing with the Covid-19 virus and that being on a permanent ‘code red’ is no longer effective. In an op-ed addressing the issue, the scientists said that the state of disaster has allowed politicians to act in irrational and unscientific ways, without any accountability or transparency, and it was time this came to an end.

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