Picture: iStock
Goody gumdrops! It’s about to get exciting! You’ve got to love this government.
The Afrikaners have a rather apt expression for what’s just happened here:
Stap in, maak k@k, stap uit.
An old Afrikaans saying
Before even a statement could be made, the sniffer dogs in the media who had been hitting the refresh button every ten seconds for the last 825 days finally got the four pages of Government Gazette they were looking for.
We can discuss another time why it required four pages to issue one paragraph, but that’s not important now.
What is important is that we no longer have to wear masks! Yay!
Is that really the end of it though? We’ve spent over two years being told how important masks and all sorts of safety protocols are. I don’t even want to imagine how much public money was spent on such messaging.
Some of us bought into it and somehow, on 23 June 2022, *POOF* the fear instilled over wave after wave is just magically gone?
Others outright opposed mask mandates and couldn’t wait to strut their stuff in the malls and public spaces, even if it’s 2 days before payday and they can’t actually buy anything.
You’d think that even the dumbest administrator could foresee the polarisation being fostered here.
Private spaces are still private spaces and can impose their right of admission reserved if they so choose. Some employees may continue to feel at risk due to the two years of campaigning designed to do so.
Other employees are going to be eager to cough in the faces of their colleagues as a matter of protest, and after all this control being told we can’t buy cigarettes, we can’t party, we can’t drink, what clothes can be sold, we’re suddenly left to our own devices.
Do employers have the ability to still impose mask wearing in offices if they choose to? Am I allowed to be denied access to a venue if my temperature is too high? These are the questions left unanswered.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy about it though, from a policy perspective, it seems somewhat counter-intuitive. I mean if we were pathetic enough to be dictated to in the way our government spent the last 2 years doing, what’s changed in the last few days?
I’m already laughing at the anticipated irony of those maskless warriors ridiculing people who still wish to wear a mask with taunts like, “don’t you want to be free?”
We really have been left in a confused social mess, but there is something exciting to come out of this: real life vaccine survival data.
Obviously with the evolution of the virus, it won’t be as cut and dry, though I’m keen to see, in five years, if more of the unvaccinated will meet their demise thanks to the virus. I’m also keen to check if there’s any merit to the adverse effects claims.
The real test for South Africa comes now. Not in regard to dealing with the pandemic, but how we deal with what we built during the pandemic.
We built resentment, fear, dread, worry, anxiety, and all sorts of things.
Kids were prevented from being on the playground, the dreams we sold pupils about how awesome matric would be were shattered for two generations and in all the confusion, we were all affected by losses of friends and family who we could hardly give a proper send off to.
It’s not as simple as a four-page gazette to get over all of that.
If you want to get aggressive about whether or not vaccination was right or whether people can wear masks if they choose, or whether it can be included in the health codes for businesses or whatever, remember this: we’ve all been through a difficult and harsh time, your answers will come in a few years and it costs nothing to be civil to those who may make different choices to you.
NOW READ: Wearing masks in schools now optional for pupils and educators, says Motshekga
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