Hysteria of ‘oppression’ is helping no-one

Like most South Africans I have been in lockdown since, well, I don’t know when any more.

Like most South Africans I am petrified, in part because of my own vulnerabilities and “underlying conditions”, in part because I dread, every waking hour, the day the Covid-19 virus reaches overcrowded informal settlements, and in part because our political economy is taking a battering, and society — all of us — are at our wits’ end.

The feeling I have (since I cannot speak for everyone), almost every day, is one of helplessness.

I cannot undo my “underlying conditions”.

I cannot prevent the virus from reaching informal settlements.

I cannot do anything directly, or indirectly, to get economic activity going again, so that by the time this pandemic has been stopped, everyone has a job to return to, or some means to put food on the table.

All I can do is trust that the government actually knows what it’s doing.

From experience, I probably trust only about three or four people in the executive ...

Further down, so to speak, there is little that makes me feel confident or even optimistic.

We have national cabinet ministers, provincial leaders, members of legislators, and members of the SAPS and SANDF who have behaved appallingly — with no conception of the rights contained in our constitution.

It seems as if with every step forward President Cyril Ramaphosa has taken, his party’s office bearers take us two or more steps back – if it is not a cabinet minister breaking lockdown restrictions.

And then there is a sector of society, emboldened, so to speak, by a Donald Trump-inspired movement, who imagine the (necessary) lockdown as an infringement of their rights; of liberty and freedom.

These are people who, quite sadly, have started drawing terribly misguided comparisons between the lockdown, to stop the virus from spreading, to Nazism, fascism, Stalinism and authoritarianism.

Surely there is no moral equivalence between asking people to stay at home to prevent the spread of a deadly disease, and the mass murder of

Hitler and Stalin?

The DA’s John Steenhuisen tweeted about police minister Bheki Cele as an “obergruppenführer ”– a reference to the Nazis.

Ivo Vegter of the Institute of Race Relations referenced the Gestapo being “in charge of our underwear” and Rapport editor Waldimar Pelser sarcastically placed a picture of burning coals on his braai because it was “still allowed”.

This is part of the hysteria some folk spread as part of drawing false comparisons between dictatorial regimes and very serious efforts to curb the spread of the virus.

There is no doubt we have some truly nasty people who continue doing cruel and inhumane things to people living on the margins of society.

It’s risible, however, for people who never experienced oppression and injustice, or an authoritarian state, military incursions into townships, police brutality and random detentions and targeted assassinations (of people like Victoria Mxenge, Neil Aggett, Ashley Kriel or Ahmed Timol) or the destruction of communities through forced removals, to now say they’re oppressed because their favourite gourmet food shop is closed or they can’t take their poodles to the grooming parlour.

The lockdowns in Italy and Spain have been worse than that of SA.

They recorded high infection and death rates, notwithstanding.

The British and US governments have been slow in response, with the numbers of cases and deaths skyrocketing daily.

In the meantime, the World Health Organisation has singled out SA as one of the more successful countries in the early stages (I still fear the worst is yet to come).

But some of our compatriots will not be happy until they can return to the privileges they enjoyed before the pandemic.

I have left my home four times since the start of the lockdown — each time to visit a pharmacy, or to the shops for food.

My sense is that this will be one of the worst winters of our democracy.

I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Our health system may not be able to cope with high numbers of cases.

Now is not the time to be reckless.

We would do the country a great service if we focused our journalistic efforts on the inhuman treatment some members of the police and armed forces inflict on communities — not on self-dramatisation.

I may be disappointed and quite disturbed by market fundamentalists who would insist that we “open the economy” and let “the market” sort things out in some social Darwinist apocalypse.

There is, however, probably nothing more distressing than knowing we cannot trust the state — beyond a handful of people — to deliver on the promise to keep us all safe and healthy.