LET’S GO BACK TO ‘DECIMAL DAN’ STRATEGY TO FIGHT COVID

WE are in a pandemic, and we have been surviving on stats, reports, urban myths, opinion, retro-action and monkey-seemonkey-do tactics. If that isn’t crudely direct enough, please read on.

Do you remember when the coin of the realm was sterling? Do you remember pounds, shillings and pence, sometimes called LSD?

The “L” was for Libra, meaning a Roman pound, the “S” was for solidus, a shilling and the “D” stood for denarius, a Roman penny. The sterling pound contained 240 pennies, four times as many farthings, also crowns, half-crowns and guineas.

Now I hear you asking: What does this have to do with a national need? It’s simple. I remember these ancient, obscure, quaint bits of information because of education.

Yes, education. When South Africa changed from this pre-decimal currency, there was a song and dance that went on day in, day out, about “Decimal Dan”, the rand-cents man.

This was a a daily, hourly, almost continuous dissemination of information and empowerment to help the whole nation change from 12 pennies in a shilling to 10 cents. The strategy was simple: repetition, repetition, repetition.

For more than a year I have been listening to the way the public was involved in fighting what is turning out to be a formidable foe. There was never enough urgency or buy-in.

Too many speculations about false news and tampered-with statistics ran parallel to the need to say what the real truth was: this pandemic kills without discrimination. This virus mutates faster than we can provide minimal defence.

Allow me some reductionism. If our nation were at war, with troops from outside shooting into our country, what would we do? Ask for a ceasefire while we scurry to get bullets? Or did the 1994 unnecessary splurge of armspurchasing avoid that scene of ridicule?

What about hunger? When our children are hungry, do we first see to party politics, asking the hungry, starving children to be good partisan members and hold on while we make a plan to find bread?

Despite the choke-hold that the big pharmaceutical companies have in terms of patents, why don’t they go over to the Decimal Dan mode? Or why don’t we use the cars with loud-hailers we use to garner votes?

Or why isn’t national TV dragooned into reducing some of their silly adverts for longer hair and nails into hourly, or half-hourly, or quarter-hourly announcements on the need for Covid protocols to be observed?

The public address systems in shopping-malls tell us where one can buy three and only pay for two. Why aren’t these companies, who benefit from the presence of these brave shoppers, rewarding them by offering cheap or free vitamins, or announcing reminders to maintain social distance?

Why aren’t all the banks providing sanitiser at their ATMs where every Jack, John and Archy punches away with Covid-tainted fingers? Signs don’t cut it. Not everybody can read.

Posters on poles don’t meet the need. We need constant, audible input to conscientise the nation into one choreographed unit that is intent on breaking this deadlock of fear and uncertainty, the way we all danced as perfect consorts to expunge the inhumane apartheid.

We have made mistakes, as the prez admitted. One was to separate teachers and health-care workers. They are the same. Don’t distinguish between them. And close the schools because children do not understand distancing. Children function on touch and embrace and high-fives and herding.

So perhaps my piece will be slated as mundane. As the Arch once said: I am warning you! We are dealing with Covid, yes. That is bad enough. But our worst weakness is human behaviour, or lack of. Let’s galvanise the whole country into song and sing a song like Decimal Dan did. The prez is too tired by now. Let those who make money despite the blight put their money where it matters.

A lot of what I have written comes from my very good scientist friend. Thank you, Zay.