Ramaphosa needs to get the people behind him again

The president declared the state of national disaster just under two months ago. At that point, South Africa had 61 confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections.

The number of infections is now approaching 10,000 countrywide and the mortality rate of the pandemic has stayed just under 2%.

By comparison, the United States’ mortality rate is close to 6% (just under 70,000 deaths), Italy has more than 28,000 fatalities (13%) and France more than 24,000 deaths (14%).

President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government took advice from scientists with years of experience in the field of virology, who also studied the devastation of the virus in other countries before embarking on the current measures.

But now, sections of this country’s business and religious sectors are taking legal action against government to allow them to trade.

To the untrained eye, the statistics of the pandemic in this country will not seem to justify the supposedly draconian conditions of the lockdown. A layperson will look at the relatively few deaths resulting from the “few” infections and come to the “logical” conclusion that this lockdown is not justified.

The truth of the matter is that Ramaphosa and the government are suffering a backlash from the success of their own timely actions.

It takes a certain level of education to understand that it is not some miracle that SA’s statistics have stayed as low as they have.

It is as a direct result of the declaration of the state of national disaster.

On the day the national disaster was declared the United Kingdom had 35 deaths from 1,300 cases. Its death toll is now 28,000 from almost 200,000 cases.

SA’s timeous action averted a certain disaster because the number of confirmed cases here is still below 10,000 at exactly the same period. But restlessness and misguided bravado are setting in, even though government has announced a raft of measures to ease pressure on business and stave off hunger among the poorest sections of the population.

The business leaders seeking to take government to court are making a grave mistake, in that scientists have already said that the spread of the virus has not reached its peak in this country.

The daily updates do, indeed, indicate a controlled but upward trend in the spread. It is predicted that the Western Cape will have as many as 80,000 cases (it presently has 2,000).

If the lockdown conditions are successfully challenged through a legal bid, the gruesome and horrible cases of thousands of deaths a day that are currently being experienced in Europe and the United States will be experienced here, right in the middle of winter, which could render the situation even worse.

It must be said government made some unnecessary enemies through the bungling of some of the announcements of the relaxation of some of the measures of the lockdown, when dropping the country’s status from level 5 to level 4.

It also didn’t earn itself any accolades through its heavy-handedness when dealing with the current ban on cigarette and liquor sales during the lockdown.

In hindsight, these matters could have been handled without the measures being seemingly punitive, rather than being there to curb the spread of the pandemic.

It is now time for Ramaphosa to go on a charm offensive to get citizens to hold on a while longer so that attempts by business to put profits over lives are seen as just that.

Sydney Majoko.

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