A colleague WhatsApped me from Jo’burg on Friday, asking how I was. I replied that I was sitting at my computer, watching my JSE stock portfolio evaporate before my eyes and looking forward to the weekend. She thought that hilarious.
I didn’t think it all that funny, but then we’ve all had a sense of humour failure last week.
It was sobering on Sunday night, watching President Ramaphosa spelling out the virtual lockdown of the country.
It had just got serious.
Well done to the government for the measures taken so far, to Dr Zweli Mkhize for moving as fast as he has.
We don’t know if the measures the President spelled out are overreaction, just right or too late. I guess we’ll know in a year or so.
We don’t know if Covid-19 is as severe or more severe than the regular flu. All the precautionary measures we have set out in this issue are sensible steps that should minimise your chances of being infected and of spreading the virus, should you pick it up.
Take precautions, but don’t panic. This will pass.
Before Sunday night, I had been reading a very enlightening article on Biznews by Cape Town neurologist Dr James Butler, who says we are very wrong in thinking that South Africa is necessarily on its way to becoming another Zimbabwe.
He starts: “The human brain is remarkably prone to bias, a state that makes an accurate understanding of facts and formulation of predictions unreliable. Herding of behaviour and thinking, amplified by mainstream and social media, may produce beliefs that are widely held, yet represent delusional ideation.”
If the tone of the mainstream and social media and of personal experience is anything to go by, South Africans are generally very gloomy about our future.
One commonly hears people using phrases like “things are just getting worse and worse” and “South Africa is a basket case”.
No predictive model, he says, can be built on one data point.
South Africans are simply too fond of remembering and quoting the Zimbabwean experience and of using this to intuitively estimate their predictions for South Africa.
In quoting the Zimbabwean experience, our biases are so strong that South Africans simply ignore the evidence from Zimbabwe’s neighbours, such as Namibia, Tanzania and Botswana, let alone from other globally developing and even developed countries.
Singapore and other Asian Tigers spring to mind.
That’s a paraphrase of the article, but well worth a read to perk up the spirits.
I recall arriving in London in 1972, very wet behind the ears, and was asked by a worthy English gentleman how long South Africa would last.
I repeated the conventional thinking at the time – about five years.
How wrong was that? SA, as it was then, lasted until 1993 and here we are 27 years after that, for better or worse, still not doing too badly.
So, before you sink into a decline, there’s scientific proof that things are not always as bad as we think that are.
Closer to home, we do have reason to get a little uptight.
The breakdown of law and order on the Ballito beachfront is a very real threat to a lot of good things about our home turf.
Local developers are trying to talk the municipality and police into taking action, to put a stop to the drinking and bad behaviour.
It’s ruining business and visitors are taking one look and heading out.
Reading between the lines of our own interactions with local government politicians and police over this matter, my interpretation is that there is little political will to help.
There’s an attitude that Ballito should stop thinking that it deserves special attention, that it should learn that life’s tough.
Ballito contributes an enormous amount to the district budget through residential rates and taxes, services, electricity, water etc.
How much do Groutville, Ndwedwe and Maphumulo contribute by comparison?
Not even close.
Have the politicians considered what will happen if the sponsors of the Ballito Pro surf contest decide to pull out?
Don’t think it can’t happen.
The previous sponsors got fed up with Durban, that’s how it ended up here.
That contest is conservatively worth R60 million to the local economy and it could disappear in a puff of smoke.
You don’t appreciate piped water until the tap runs dry.
* * *
Finally, the answer for why people are panic buying toilet paper.
Every time one person sneezes, 10 people around them soil themselves.
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