After a brief ray of hope we’re frightened again, thanks to government getting it so horribly wrong
One sometimes has to wonder whether all the suffering was worth it — the forced detention in our homes, loss of our liberties, an economy in ruins, loss of jobs, people with nothing to begin with reduced to even more penury. All of these for what? The lockdown was supposed to give us a breather to prepare for the storms ahead. But on the face of it, we seem unprepared. The Covid-19 infection rate is roaring ahead inexorably, as if it’s on steroids. The experts tell us they fear the worst. Night after night we have these scary numbers thrown at us. What are we meant to do or make of them except be bamboozled and depressed? But we await them like addicts hankering after their daily fix. “Eish, I don’t know what’s happening”, a friend complained the other day. It was almost midnight. “Zweli has not posted the numbers.” Zweli as in health minister Zweli Mkhize.
“He’s trying, bandla!” said one of Mkhize’s many admirers. That seems to be the general consensus. There is appreciation, even sympathy, for his toils. But the government he represents hasn’t covered itself in glory. Mkhize seems to be swimming against the tide of the devil-may-care attitude and utter incompetence of this administration.
And yet things could have been different and the prospects of dealing this virus a deadly blow could have been brighter had the government not messed things up so royally. We were overly optimistic. Even on a good day the government seems to possess special skills to get things horribly wrong.
It is fair to say this is a new virus, and that many other governments — better resourced with better qualified personnel — are also struggling to contain it. So we’re not alone in this dungeon. But we could have done better.
Yet things started promisingly. When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown at the end of March the country seemed ready for it. Having observed the virus’s remorseless ruination in Asia, especially in China, the public for weeks called for Ramaphosa to act. And when he finally did, people cheered. Not even the heavy restrictions imposed on their liberties and their livelihoods seemed to faze them. For a split second we dared to hope. But not for the first time, Ramaphosa flattered to deceive.
He spoke like the decisive leader we’d been waiting for. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, we thought. At the military send-off he looked the part of a true commander dispatching his troops to carry out his instructions. You’re going out to serve the people, not to harass them, he told them. They duly went out and killed an innocent man. Nothing has been heard of the soldiers since.
But public goodwill — so pivotal if such a mammoth task is to stand any chance of success — was squandered at that first meeting where ministers, instead of relaying crucial information, seemed intent on setting out their own stalls. What came out of their mouths did not seem to conform with the tone set by Ramaphosa. They seemed delighted at the opportunity to lord it over the rest of us. Power had gone to their heads. Bheki Cele, the most loquacious and conceited of the lot, saw himself as head of the gendarmerie whose word was law. Some of the restrictions seemed needless, and created almost out of spite. In the following weeks, ministers were telling retailers what sorts of chicken, shoes or T-shirts to sell. They had lost the plot, if not their minds. The lockdown was a broom to sweep away all the “dirt”. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, for instance, wants to use it to ban cigarettes. That the country is losing millions in tax revenue seems to be the least of her concerns.
But, in retrospect, the mistake was probably made right at the beginning. Announcing the restrictions, Ramaphosa also made available R500bn to tide people over. As a result the attention moved from the main purpose of defeating the virus by testing, tracing, isolating and, crucially, educating people about it. Instead it was about how to get the money. The subsequent long lines of people queueing for food and money must surely have added to the infection rates. And in keeping with our culture of corruption, some of the money has already ended up in the wrong pockets.
The government is now involved in an ugly spat with taxis, a wayward industry that hardly pays any tax, over their share of the lolly. What should be a life-and-death struggle has now been reduced to an unseemly brawl over money. One union has even suggested the government give a once-off R1m handout to every citizen. I guess one can’t blame them. Everyone wants a piece of the action. That the government is broke doesn’t seem to be a bother. After all, money grows on trees.
Some inexplicably stupid decisions were made along the way, one of them being allowing religious bodies to resume services. The opening of schools is also premature. Grade Rs are meant to go back to school tomorrow. Try teaching them about social distancing or the wearing of masks!
We were scared witless before the virus landed on our shores when we saw the destruction it was wreaking in other countries. Then for a brief moment there was a ray of hope. Now we’re frightened again. In a way, the virus strikes at our soft underbelly — the toxic confluence of corruption, incompetence and ignorance.
As the virus remorselessly reaps its awful harvest, what are we going to do about it? What is the plan? Will we reintroduce the lockdown restrictions, or will we sit back and let it wreak its havoc? The consequences, as one man said years ago, are just too ghastly to contemplate.