At the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have to live with what’s left of SA

Sometimes you need balance and other times you need to commit more wholly to a solution. When you need the latter, balance isn’t exactly going to do the trick.

As the pandemic goes on, one may be forgiven for starting to believe the president is attempting to usurp Jeremy Clarkson.

At first, on taking office, there was a sense of “how hard can it be?”, but when lockdown was announced, you would be forgiven for thinking he was screaming “POWER”. That was all good in the beginning when we believed there was reason informing these decisions but the more Clarkson this becomes, the more we’ll learn most of this will be in vain unless more is done.

True to form, there’s a sense of “let’s not get bogged down by…” what happened to that R500 billion, delayed/no Unemployment Insurance Fund payouts, that cigarettes were banned on the strength of reasoning that was most useful as a Max Hurrel sample or that seemingly little preparation was done during hard lockdown.

Okay, maybe that’s not fair. Further to the ways of Clarkson, there was some time spent in a top secret Eastern Cape test laboratory for a ridiculous challenge on how to spend the most money on creating a useless ambulance. The winners appeared to solder some wheels to a bed and tied that to a motorbike.

While it makes for hilarious content on entertainment programmes, it isn’t what one wants to hear on the news. Yes, we’re in unprecedented territory but even so you can improve your odds.

This is why when the three clowns creating content try to cross Botswana in little two-wheel drive cars, the people doing the actual business of filming and producing are in sturdy 4x4s.

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I don’t mind being scolded for going out drinking. I just don’t think that scolding me is going to do the trick when your friends are getting away with stealing my money. I don’t mind my liquor being taken. I just don’t think preventing me from sinning is going to do the trick while you allow others to do it illegally with no consequences.

Last week, I wrote about how you need to cultivate a culture of buying in to your solution when you lack the resources to police your plan strictly – and it’s about to show.

I don’t even mind being told not to party but if you’re not going to take action against the organisers of Rage and expect me to stay away from my local pub, I’m going to swear at you… and if you expect my local pub to close during a pretty profitable time but offer no support… good luck to you.

This balancing act may seem like a good political way forward but practically it just seems like a waste when it’s all uncoordinated.

You have to work with what you got and what we have is a populace that does what they want even when you tell them not to so you have to do more to manipulate behaviour.

There’s so much more to managing a pandemic than making rules and my sympathies go to our leadership.

The president is between many rocks and hard places and has seemingly little support from his team. It must be tedious, especially because this is real life and not a car show. The most frightening difference between the two though is that at the end of the car show, they dump their cars and go home. At the end of this pandemic, we have to live with what’s left.

Richard Anthony Chemaly. Entertainment attorney, radio broadcaster and lecturer of communication ethics.

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