Cele gets message across with raid on ‘reckless’ nightclub

Reckless clubbing South Africans seem determined to party the country back into more severe lockdown restrictions, as experts continue to worry about a “second wave” of Covid-19 infections, which has seen a number of European countries revert to tough restrictions.

In the early hours of yesterday, Police Minister Bheki Cele, members of the SA Police Service and the Joburg Metropolitan Police Department busted a club in Sandton called Blackdoor Lifestyle Lounge for contravening the Disaster Management Act.

In addition to reportedly having no liquor license or manager on duty, the club was packed beyond capacity, practiced no social distancing and no patrons wore masks.

It was open well beyond the midnight curfew. One of the few sectors of the leisure industry that have not yet received the go-ahead to reopen after the hard Covid-19 lock down are nightclubs, as these are deemed non-essential and violate curfew laws currently in place.

Nightclubs are notoriously packed and social distancing is not practical or easily accomplished. Such establishments create potentially dangerous settings, which experts dub “super-spreaders”.

This is when many people congregate in a small space and significantly increase the chances of one or more people being infected with Covid-19.

Cele said: “By law, clubs are not opened. Our information was correct…” “There were almost 300 people, packed, no masks, no social distancing, breaking the law, and with the threat of the second wave, we will not survive with these clubs.

“But besides breaking the Covid law, people are breaking the real law to be here after curfew – they are still packed here.”

Cele alluded to Blackdoor not being the only nightclub operating in secret in Johannesburg, saying: “This is not the only one, there is another one.”

According to police department spokesperson Lirandzu Themba, the owner of Blackdoor will be charged with contravening the Disaster Management Act.

The Act was recently extended by another month to 15 November by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

She said this was due to “the need to continue augmenting the existing legislation and contingency arrangements undertaken by organs of state to address the impact of the disaster”.

A second wave spelt doom for the economy, according to economist Professor Philippe Burger, who said reverting to previous lockdown levels would not be an easy choice for the government. “If we look at the Covid numbers, it seems there is a slight uptick in some provinces and some of that uptick is a lot bigger in certain province, like where I live in the Free State.

“If you look at the data in terms of incidences per million, we have the highest rate of infection in the country.

The Free State is by far the worst affected at the moment in terms of daily numbers, despite having only a sixth of the nation’s population.

“The Eastern Cape is starting to see an increase again. “It is still to be seen if there will be a second wave, but following the introduction of alert Level 1 lockdown, there has been an increase there.”

While there were already rumours of discussions of higher lockdown levels going toward the festive season, this would be a “horrible” choice government would be faced with – saving lives versus saving livelihoods.

Examples seen in the US and across Europe have shown that some second waves could potentially be more severe than the initial outbreaks, like in France, which was experiencing around 3 000 new cases daily.

Chances of government looking into more localised approaches to curb infection rates souring the festive season were higher than that of a hard national lockdown, Burger suggested.

But he was concerned that communities were becoming dangerously lax about Covid-19 safety with packed drinking holes and restaurants over weekends.

“There is a street in Bloemfontein called Second Avenue and all the restaurants and bars are there. This weekend there were cars parked around the block because the places were so packed,” he observed, noting there was evidence of this behaviour across the country.”

– simnikiweh@citizen.co.za; news@citizen.co.za

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