SA’s ‘between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place’ year
If “between a rock and a hard place” were a year, it would be 2020.
Never have I experienced the effect of being crushed by equally heartless forces from a multiple of opposing ends as I have this year.
The clarity which now seems to have been possible in the preCovid-19 era is all gone.
The big choice between health and the economy became apparent as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Every country had to decide whether to prioritise health or the economy. Most countries, including our own, thankfully chose health.
However, it quickly became clear that the weight of the big rock, the economy, was growing heavier as time and the lockdown rolled on. We had to attend to it, but the hard place was apparently going nowhere.
We were told to expect death and mayhem.
No sooner did we accept the inevitability of death than we had to face it, not at some far removed national television level, but close to home.
I am not sure how many times I have imagined fighting for breath as Covid-19 crushes my lungs, or how many times I imagined my own funeral, or that of a loved one.
Soon enough the funerals started rolling in and I could not attend.
On the one hand was the inevitable urge to attend the funeral of a loved one, on the other the cold fear of becoming a Covid-19 agent spreading death and mayhem wherever I go.
You somewhat think rest must be around the corner considering the mental exertion posed by the pandemic, but no rest is to be had by any of the living.
Soon we were torn about whether to send our children to school. On the one hand we want our children to learn, yet on the other the possibility of infection looms large.
One can actually imagine being crushed by the possibility of losing a child to this heartless pandemic. Yet at the same time, we have to go to work and the possibility of bringing back the infection to our homes looms just as large.
While the question earlier was whether to prioritise the health or the economy of the country, at the personal level the choice lost any sort of academic curiosity.
We now had to decide whether to go back to work or to lose our jobs. Those who ran their own companies had to choose between opening up or closing shop entirely.
Perhaps most disheartening was seeing queues of tightly squeezed grant recipients waiting for their monthly allowance. At least for some of us, there is a bit of choice whether to join a queue; this is hardly the case for grant recipients.
The helplessness of watching disaster unfolding is itself a crushing experience. It tends to reduce one to a small ball of insignificance.
It is no surprise that we almost always expect the bigger collective, the country, to pick up the slack during times of helplessness.
We figure, if we are so helpless, somebody has to be better off than us.
And often we hope, even against glaring evidence, that the government has the requisite skill, capability or resources to save us from the crushing forces of Covid-19.
Soon South Africans must decide whether to board congested taxis or lose their jobs. They have to decide between dying at home or dying in congested hospitals.
They have to decide whether to take on more debt, to starve or close their businesses.
Finance minister Tito
Mboweni, on the other hand, was at pains to explain the debt crisis facing the entire country.
“We have accumulated far too much debt; this downturn will add more. This year, out of every rand that we pay in tax, 21c goes to paying the interest on our past debts,” he said.
“Eventually the gains of the democratic era would be lost. The wide gate opens to a path of bankruptcy.
“A sovereign debt crisis is when a country can no longer pay back the interest or principal on its borrowings. We are still some way from that. But if we do not act now, we will shortly get there.”
While this is a disheartening assessment of our national financial situation, Mboweni thinks there is still hope.
While the choice to take on more debt has already been made, the choice to push Mboweni’s economic reforms must still be made urgently.