President Cyril Ramaphosa said that there was evidence to suggest that the measures government was taking to fight the spread of COVID-19 were working.
Ramaphosa said that the number of infections had slowed since the lockdown was announced two weeks ago and they wanted to keep it that way.
There are currently 1,934 infections in the country and 18 people have died.
The president said that a further extension meant preventing massive loss of life.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said that extending the lockdown meant that government must come up with creative ways to keep the economy going and save people from hunger.
“As part of the second element of our strategy, we’ve put in place various measures to provide support to businesses in distress, to workers facing loss of income, to the self-employed and to informal businesses. Many of these measures are being taken up by both large and small businesses.”
Ramaphosa said that his executive would also be making sacrifices.
“We’ve decided that the president and the deputy president, ministers and deputy ministers will each take a one-third cut in their salaries for the next three months.”
The president said that these were tough times and asked the country to pull together in order to defeat the spread of COVID-19.