Punch-drunk public need faith restored
In the run-up to president Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation last night, social media was awash with comments from people saying they would not be watching as they no longer had any interest in what he had to say; some were even calling for mass civil disobedience if the lockdown regulations were tightened. It is clear that the government has lost the goodwill of a large portion of the country and that once the reality of what the lockdown would do hit home — businesses shuttered, some permanently; jobs lost; people starving — it lost much of the buy-in given in such good faith at the start of the lockdown in March.
The flip-flopping on many of the rules — some of them just plain silly — has not helped its cause.
Now something is unbanned, then, sorry, no it isn’t. Then certain establishments are allowed to open for business, then, oh dear, no, our mistake, they’re not allowed to reopen, the government says.
Restaurants can open, but they cannot sell alcohol, yet this is where most of their profits come from.
Some eateries are circumventing the rules by surreptitiously serving alcohol in coffee cups, others have decided to sell it openly, risking closure by the authorities, because they say they will have to shut down permanently anyway if they cannot serve liquor with meals.
So they’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. The cigarette ban is a farce, with the criminal underworld scoring big time while the government is the real loser — with the ban costing it billions in tax revenue.
More and more people are also starting to question things such as the millions spent on the Eastern Cape’s loudly heralded and much-maligned “pramambulances ”— which key figures in government are now hastening to distance themselves from — to the UIF-Ters and grant debacles, and the failure to set up field hospitals.
People are scared, but they are also fedup with the contradictions and failures of the government during this time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
They need leadership, they need certainty and they need to know exactly how the government intends to resurrect the collapsing economy.
The government has lost the public trust, for the most part, and trust once destroyed is not easily regained.