Time to reflect on chaotic year of the coronavirus

Can you remember what it was like, way back in 2020 BC? It seems like another, almost prehistoric era, those times Before Coronavirus … yet it has been just over a year.

And, exactly 365 days ago, the global pandemic suddenly got serious for South Africa as President Cyril Ramaphosa shut down the country. It’s been a long and painful road since then – in more ways than one.

There was the embarrassing pain of seeing the ANC’s leaders strutting about as if field marshals in a war, wearing military attire and praising their revolutionary friends like Cuba.

There was actual, physical pain for those at the receiving end of the rifle butts, boots and fists from the emergency deployed soldiers of our ironically named “defence force”.

More pain for the relatives of people like Collins Khosa, whose beating by the military led to his death. Then there was the hair-pulling, nail-biting, temper tantrum-throwing pain occasioned by the ban on the sale of cigarettes and booze.

Being South Africans, though, many of us made a plan and got smuggled fags and booze to get us through the long, long nights.

Then there was pineapple beer … but the less said about that the better. More pain came as the lockdowns gut punched our already sickly economy, putting thousands out of jobs and even more on reduced wages.

But the biggest pain of all was for those who lost dear relatives and friends to the awful Covid-19 disease which the clever Doubting Thomases tried to dismiss as “just a flu, bro…” To date, almost 53 000 South Africans have succumbed to Covid – far more than the clever, non-medical statistical “experts” predicted.

In the beginning, there was trust in Ramaphosa – who, up to that point had been numbingly unspectacular as our head of state – as the man who would lead us out of the valley of Covid death.

His lockdown hit us with blunt force, proving this was a crisis and not a make-believe political stunt. Many of us gave him our support, even as the lockdowns dragged on and on and our finances collapsed.

The positive side was that Jacob Zuma and his cronies were, for many months, silent in the face of an obvious national crisis.

While we accepted lockdowns as the price to pay to “flatten the curve” on infection and buy our medical institutions time to prepare for the tsunami of cases, it quickly became apparent that Covid-19 exposed the worst of our government ineptness.

Provincial hospitals in places like the Eastern Cape were overwhelmed – because of years of neglect and not because of Covid.

Then, the cadres stuck their hands deep into the disaster relief cookie jar and hundreds of millions vanished. Even in the midst of a national catastrophe, looting took priority.

Yet, as infections drop dramatically and we forget the devastation of the second wave of the virus (far deadlier than the first because of our new, virulent, local variant), many think things are back to normal.

Oh no.

A third wave – fuelled by huge gatherings and raucous behaviour over Easter – seems certain. All the while, our vaccination programme is conspicuous by its absence and has seen more blundering by our leaders.

One year on, let’s pause for a moment. Remember the dead. Love the living. And be careful out there.

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