Democracy is the only ‘vaccine’ that will make a difference

We’re a resilient bunch,” I thought as I sat in a traffic jam on the highway yesterday morning.

“Nobody bounces back from disaster as we do.”

It’s difficult to imagine that we are in the middle of an international pandemic. South Africans have largely returned to normal – our real normal, not an imagined “new normal”, as politicians called it 18 months ago.

Yes, we wear masks when we go to shops and we sanitise. But apart from that, we continue on our old path to make a living.

A lot of people are said to work from home although you can’t see it by the morning and afternoon traffic. There are nightly curfews but when I took my father-in-law to the airport for his flight to Ghana a week ago, the roads were busy – at 1am.

The malls are busy, restaurants are buzzing and we are just waiting for Covid patients to stop hogging hospital beds so that we can resume that age-old tradition of alcohol-fuelled violence with the knowledge that medical care is available for victims.

As DH Lawrence said in Lady Chatterley’s Lover: “… there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles.”

I don’t think our ability to scramble over the obstacle of Covid should surprise anyone. This challenge isn’t all that new to us.

We have a lot of experience dealing with pandemics, after all.

We have battled the pandemics of poverty, racism, suppression and an unequal society for centuries.

And we have been the victims of corruption, nepotism and cadre deployment for decades.

The ANC – formerly the liberators of our country – is now the virus behind most of the pandemics we have been battling in recent years, as the Zondo commission revealed.

Luckily for us, there is an effective vaccine available to the people of this country – democracy.

We can ensure herd immunity against this virus at the ballot box, which is exactly why we should all resist attempts to postpone the municipal elections.

The good people of this country need their opportunity to use their vote to ensure that we get the normal we deserve: quality education, jobs, effective health care, opportunities for us all.