A nurse in full PPE inside the Nasrec quarantine/isolation site in Nasrec, 3 July 2020. Picture: Neil McCartney
As Covid-19 infections and deaths continue to soar beyond 100 days of disaster management restrictions, questions are beginning to be asked about what SA has to show for shutting the country and plunging the economy into a crisis.
Most recent reports suggest that the country’s economy probably contracted more than 30% in the second quarter when the restrictions were imposed, with the drop in gross domestic product forecast at 32.6% for the three months through June from the previous quarter.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown from 27 March to curb the spread of the virus, with almost all services activities, except for the essential, restricted and people only allowed to venture out of the homes to buy food, seek medical attention or to collect social grants.
Since then the lockdown has been characterised by reports of brutality on citizens at the hands of police and the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), senior government officials and ministers as well as police found on the wrong side of lockdown regulations.
When the lockdown was announced, the country was at more than 1 000 Covid-19 infections, with two deaths, and this number has since spiked to 177 124 and the death toll 2 952.
Political Scientist and professor at the University of the North West, André Duvenhage, is not optimistic about the intervention, saying it was too soon, has seemingly failed to prepare the health system, and that it has instead been misused.
He said at the moment, the economy was the biggest challenge than what Covid-19 could provide at best and that SA failed to consider the reality that you cannot run away from Covid-19.
“…sometimes it is better to go through it and get it behind you than to postpone it, and the reasons for postponing it was to get medical and health facilities in place, and it does not seem to me that there is a lot of these facilities in place at the moment. Now we had a lockdown of 100 days and this process is now reaching its peak. So there is a problem with the whole timing…,” Duvenage said.
He said the other context was that there were lots of politics going into the Covid-19 response space, saying politicians were “using and misusing” this opportunity for political gain, such as promoting certain political agendas, such as radical economic transformation.
“I have seen victimisation of individuals speaking on a scientific basis, I have seen disaster management that was misused to get out of the framework of the oversight function of parliament, and at the moment there are more than a hundredcourt cases, there are group cases in process and people are talking about class cases, and I think this Covid-19 process is starting to develop into a crisis of its own,” Duvenage warned.
He however said there was no chance of retuning to level 5 lockdown, saying government would not get the same kind of cooperation from the citizens who are hard-hit by the economic outcomes of sitting and doing nothing.
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