Yet more pain for bleeding taxpayers

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address on Sunday night was a bit of an anticlimax. In reality, no one expected him to do anything else than ease the Covid-related restrictions. He didn’t have a choice.

Four weeks of restrictions – on the sale of alcohol, travel for leisure by Gauteng residents, the curfew, the size of public gatherings and on restaurants, gyms and places of entertainment – had just piled more suffering on ordinary people.

Whether the restrictions had any impact on the soaring infection and death figures is something only time – and a thorough assessment – will show. What is clear now is that Gauteng is over the peak of infections, although the numbers are rising in some provinces and deaths are alarmingly high.

Taking the country back to adjusted level 3 might help stimulate the economy and save some jobs, especially in the hard-hit hospitality and tourism sectors.

But it will also prove “too little, too late”, for many thousands whose jobs were snatched away from them over the past year because of restrictions and the near-implosion of the economy.

The easing of regulations will, sadly, probably have little effect on those businesses destroyed by the looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng earlier this month, nor on the moods of business people and investors, which must be at a very low ebb.

There were fine promises by Ramaphosa to extend the R350 emergency grant for the poorest of the poor, as well as to continue the Ters salary relief scheme for those affected by the restrictions. The three-month “payment holiday” for PAYE tax contributions by business – to allow them to build up their cash flow – is laudatory.

But someone will have to pay for this. And no doubt it will be the taxpayers putting their hands in their pockets – again.