Stay home. Or get shot. Your call

Once you have been through two divorces, there’s not much that can really scare you. Apart from maybe the thought of marrying a third time. Living through a full-blown pandemic under virtual martial law does tweak the nerves a bit, though. I haven’t, however, had a proper panic until I read this post by Cameron Dugmore, the ANC’s token whitey in the Western Cape: “We need to start growing food. It’s time to plant seeds and find solutions from the soil.”

We’re heading into winter, man. This is not the time to be planting. Or is it? What grows in winter? And where would we even get seeds from? The government has shut down all the nurseries. I don’t mind paying for black market seeds if it means having something to eat in autumn or spring or whenever it is these things turn into food, but I don’t know any illicit seed dealers.

There was a time not long ago – like last month – that we’d look to the politicians for solutions. Now you’re telling us we need to find solutions from the soil? I don’t know, bro. Unless you’re suggesting we start growing weed and magic mushrooms, I don’t see any solutions coming out of the ground. What about people who live in flats and don’t have any soil? Or people who are unable to keep plants alive for more than three days? I know someone who is capable of killing a pot plant just by looking at it. She’s currently working on upgrading her skill to include men.

So we’re graduating to Level 4, hey? Great news if you work at an open-cast mine. And absolutely brilliant news if you own the mine. For those of us who don’t have jobs or own much of anything, Level 4 does little to stir the loins. Nice if you smoke, of course. Sadly, I gave up after watching my mother take six months to die from lung cancer, emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder – nicotine’s unholy trinity. Even though the sale of cigarettes is Level 4’s only real benefit to the man in the street – not that he has any business being in the street – I probably won’t take it up again. The prospect of queues puts me off more than the possibility of pulmonary diseases.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a woman with the energy levels of a three-toed sloth, said that from this Friday, exercise would be allowed … no jogging or walking, though. Fine with me. In the army, I was a champion leopard-crawler. It’s a pity there wasn’t some kind of medal for it, because I wasn’t much good at anything else. So, while you’re not walking or jogging this weekend, I’ll be out leopard-crawling. I knew my military training would come in handy one day.

Another member of the confederacy conspiring to keep us locked up is Ebrahim Patel, our small but perfectly formed minister of trade and industry. Even though he is one of the dons in the disorganised crime syndicate that runs this country, he clearly has a soft spot for the proletariat. On Friday he is allowing 1.5 million people to return to the thrilling sights and sounds of assembly lines, storerooms and smelters across the country. Ah, well. As a very rich man once said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Online traders have also been badgering the silver-tongued comrade. Let us at least do e-commerce, they whine. Not a f**k, comes the carefully considered reply. If he allowed one category to e-trade, he’d have to allow everyone – including spaza shops and informal traders – to e-trade. He has a point. In no time at all, the gogos would be getting laptops and PayFast accounts and soon the skies would be thick with drones ferrying mealies and Kit-Kats across our cities.

It’s not surprising, really. This is, after all, a government that believes in collective responsibility, so why wouldn’t they also believe in collective punishment? When my mother couldn’t decide whether it was me or my sister responsible for one or other juvenile atrocity – since each blamed the other – she would beat us both. Unfair? Hell, yes. Particularly on my sister, since she was always the innocent one.

Meanwhile, blindly optimistic lobbying has broken out ahead of Fat Friday. The Coronavirus Command Council has convinced the gullible and the desperate that their opinions will be taken into account as they decide how much freedom we will be allowed to have under Level 4.

So educational books can be sold but not novels because fiction rots the mind and can lead to excessive masturbation and drug abuse. I got sent a 667-word letter drafted “in response to the government’s call for feedback”. It asked writers to add their names before sending it to the Command Council – to delete. After a few paragraphs of unseemly arse-kissing, the letter expounds on the benefits of nurturing a reading culture, why books are an essential service, why brain-food is just as important as … I skipped to the end.

“We do not ask that bookshops be open for business just yet.” But, please sir, may we be allowed to order books online and have them delivered? And they want me to put my name to that? It reads like something Chamberlain might have written to Hitler. Appeasement be damned. To the barricades!

I’d like to see less grovelling and more demanding in all areas, quite frankly. I understand the principle of slowly, slowly catchee that-which-shall-not-be-named, but this namby-pamby approach does nothing more than convince the government that we’re a nation of spineless pushovers.

Dusk to dawn curfew? Yes, master. I can buy a blanket now? Thank you, sir! I mustn’t show my face in public if I’m over 60? Ja, baas.

Yes, yes, I know about the bloody virus. But still. There are limits.

I drove to the shop a couple of days ago. They were only letting three people in at a time. The queue wasn’t long. There was one person in it. I suppose it only became a queue the moment I stood behind her. I waited for two minutes, three tops, couldn’t take any more and left.

Nosing through my suburb, a line of emergency vehicles with lights flashing and sirens wailing burst out of a side street. I made the international hand signal for “what the hell?” and took a gap the moment I could. Probably not the smartest thing to do, because I was now trapped in the middle of a convoy the likes of which were last seen on the road to Pripyat almost 34 years ago to the day.

I heard later that the “parade” was a “show of appreciation” for us being such good, obedient children during the lockdown. It had never occurred to me until then that a show of appreciation and a show of force could be identical. All they really did was boost everyone’s anxiety levels.

It reminded me of CNN and their 30-second clips titled “A moment of calm”, which are immediately followed by five hours of WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Meanwhile, across the big wet thing, the British government has a slogan: Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.

Where’s our slogan? How about this: Stay home. Or get shot. Your call.

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