A time for stability to return

The wildly circulated joke that during the national state of disaster people were not allowed to visit relatives but could arrange to meet them at a casino or restaurant for a meal goes a long way in summing up government’s difficult position during the Covid-19 lockdown.

From day one of the declaration of the state of national disaster, it was clear that the unenviable battle that government faced was one between saving lives by restricting personal interactions and saving the country’s economy by allowing parts of it to function to save whatever jobs could be saved – especially in the restaurant and entertainment sectors, which had ground to an absolute halt.

As the president announced the further easing of restrictions on Saturday evening – including the lifting the ban on the sale of tobacco products and liquor – it became clear that the country has crossed over the invisible divide in favour of now saving the economy.

There is no telling where the pandemic is headed. There are reports elsewhere in the world of second waves of the pandemic and some countries have had to reimpose some of the earlier heavier restrictions in dealing with that second wave. This is important for South Africa because as the economy opens up, it is unavoidable that the numbers will buck the downward trend for a while.

This is to be expected: more human interactions will mean easier spread. Government cannot afford to summarily shut things down again. The country cannot afford it. The reason some of the lockdown regulations are being viewed as ridiculous is not because they are, but it’s the lack of transparency that goes with them.

Take the second alcohol ban, for instance: the president announced that the number of cases of physical trauma patients being admitted to hospital following the unbanning of alcohol had increased and was taking away the extra capacity government had created in preparation for a surge in coronavirus admissions. That makes sense. What didn’t make sense was summarily shutting down an industry that provides hundreds of thousands of jobs without even the slightest consultation, without exploring any alternatives whatsoever.

The speed with which things unfolded during the lockdown might have blinded President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government to the amount of unearned goodwill which the South African public afforded them during the past five months to implement rules and regulations they would otherwise never have managed to. That goodwill is not infinite and is highly dependent on visible logic and the respect afforded to citizens by those in power.

Whether or not a second wave of the pandemic comes along, the room for manoeuvring for the government is very limited. People’s lives and their livelihoods cannot be turned on and off at will. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the number of natural deaths between the months of May and August was higher than usual at 59% more than the historical average.

Anecdotally, this suggests a parallel undetected Covid-19 pandemic has been taking lives, unhindered by the measures implemented to curb the spread. Government has done what it can to curb the spread but clearly it cannot do any more. The instability that the pandemic brought with it has not only left economic devastation, but psychological damage as well.

Government’s role right now must be to reassure citizens that it will not contribute to their anxiety and troubles by implementing stop-start measures that are really having no effect on the pandemic.

Sydney Majoko.

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