Government continues to fail us

Following decades of fighting for democracy, the irony is that the same liberation movement which now governs the country is telling adults what they can and cannot put in their bodies; when they can and cannot work – with no plan in sight on how to create more jobs.

When President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of national disaster in March due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the ANC government was cheered on by even its biggest critics. Ramaphosa and his National Coronavirus Command Council seemed to be finally putting SA first. As much as we were taken aback by the decisions to stop the sale of alcohol and tobacco products, we understood it was for the best.

It was a sacrifice South Africans were willing to make to help the government in containing the spread of this virus. We applauded them, as they regularly held live press briefings to inform us of their work. After all, our country has a large number of people who are immuno-compromised.

We have about eight million people infected with HIV and for the past years, our leading cause of death was tuberculosis. Many communities and schools finally received water and sanitation; hospitals were improved; the majority of our healthcare workers – mostly nurses – were finally being appreciated. It’s been nearly four months of lockdown.

But for what? Our will to help the government has diminished along with our confidence in them. Instead, it seems they take us for a joke. The first sign of our government not taking us seriously was when Ramaphosa’s command council backtracked on its initial announcement to permit the sale of tobacco products when the country moved to Level 4 lockdown.

The reasons for this were so pathetic that a creative music producer even turned it into a hit song which many used as a backing track for TikTok videos. They then announced the resale of alcohol as of 1 June, but the joy was short-lived when Ramaphosa announced two weeks ago that this will now be banned with “immediate effect”. This was because alcohol-related incidents congested hospital trauma units.

As I watched his address that Sunday night, I imagined liquor store workers who were probably ironing their shirts and preparing to go to work the following day again fearing for their income and livelihood.

The same government, which expects us to trust them, again made a blunder on Wednesday when it announced on social media that alcohol and tobacco sales would remain banned for the remainder of the lockdown. And as per government’s new modus operandi, again, they backtracked.

“This account posted a tweet earlier today which said that the ban on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes would remain in place throughout the lockdown period. This is incorrect. The sale of alcohol and tobacco products is prohibited under the current Level 3 regulations,” the government said on Twitter.

It makes one wonder: was this really an uninformed staffer who posted a false tweet, or a well-informed staffer who accidentally slipped up?

Either way, the government has failed in improving the healthcare system over the nearly three decades of their rule and as usual, we have to take the slack for their failures.

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