Don’t let crooks loot Ramaphosa’s package of hope

Leaving aside his Churchillian appeal to patriotism and his inability to resist the temptation to get up on the ANC’s “radical economic transformation” soapbox, there was much to commend Cyril Ramaphosa’s reveal of government’s emergency Covid-19 fiscal plan on Tuesday.

Just as government’s lockdown restrictions showed how serious it is about containing the spread of the coronavirus, the bailout plan showed how seriously it is taking the economic destruction that lockdown has wreaked.

The R500 billion package focused, correctly The Citizen believes, on the most vulnerable in society. At this stage, people need to put aside the blame game about whose fault it is that the country is so unequal and that the gap between rich and poor is so huge.

The fact is that with the economy already in meltdown, the financial impact of the coronavirus lockdown means, starkly, that many people face death or starvation.

So, it is encouraging to see that social support – via grants and large-scale distribution of food parcels to the most needy – is a central plank of the plan.

To those who moan that this is the start of the steady slope to a socialist welfare state, we remind you that hungry people are desperate people; people who will kill and loot. There can never be too high a price to pay to avoid that.

The promised support for business and to ameliorate unemployment are also important stimuli needed to jump-start South Africa once people come out of their effective house arrest. The scale of the aid is eye-watering – Ramaphosa says it amounts to 10% of SA’s annual gross domestic product.

The scale of the money which will be sloshing around will be tempting to the corrupt. They must not be allowed to steal the hope Ramaphosa has given us.

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