SA lockdown threadbare on social knowhow

SA’s government is proud that its response to Covid-19 relies on science. It might be prouder if it was also guided by knowledge of how society works.

When the national lockdown began on March 26, opposition from some quarters was inevitable. What was not expected was that the most vehement resistance would be aimed at a ban on selling tobacco products. Only about 1 in 5 South Africans smoke and previous government limits on smoking were not controversial.

The ban generated such heat because, when the government began relaxing the lockdown, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that tobacco sales would be allowed. Then, at the apparent prompting of the minister responsible for lockdown rules, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the decision was reversed; the ban is still in force.

Dlamini-Zuma has an unfortunate tendency to lecture rather than persuade and her role seems to have turned muttered resentment among some into loud anger, directed not only at the tobacco ban but the entire lockdown.

And, since the loudest opposition has come from white suburbanites, it has revived the familiar conservative argument that a “nanny state” is telling citizens it knows more about what is good for them than they do. This complaint says more about the prejudices of those who make it than reality.

All governments restrict citizens to protect their health and safety: this is why we have traffic lights. And all democracies allow governments to restrict freedoms to protect citizens in an emergency — for example, by cordoning off areas hit by fire and flood.

The “nanny state” argument expresses a belief that some of us should not be told what to do by those they consider their inferiors. But this does not mean health measures will be obeyed. It is here that knowledge of society is important.

Addictive substances harm health. They can be regulated but banning them never works since addicts find other ways to feed their addiction.

Besides the oft-quoted failure of the American prohibition, in SA, when white governments banned black people from consuming “European liquor” this created shebeens. SA’s bans on cigarette and alcohol prompted an illicit cigarette trade, the looting of liquor stores and a sharp rise in the price of pineapples, used to ferment beer. Dlamini-Zuma’s belief that the ban would prompt “a sizeable number” of people to give up smoking is contradicted by knowledge of society.

This knowledge also tells us that, even among the vast majority who are not addicts, restrictions will fail if they lack legitimacy — people may not like obeying them, but, if they accept they are there for a good reason, they will comply.

SAs lockdown rules started with high legitimacy, but this has been eroded and has now all but dissolved.

The country locked down early, when cases and deaths were relatively few. This created a legitimacy problem: people had to sacrifice liberties and livelihoods yet they did not see the fatalities and overloaded hospitals of some European countries. This problem was solved largely because citizens knew what was happening elsewhere. Legitimacy could have remained high if, like some other countries, SA’s early lockdown had done what early lockdowns are meant to do — cut infections and deaths.

But this was never an option because the scientists who advise the government insisted restrictions were not meant to stop the virus transmitting, merely to slow it down so that, when the “inevitable” surge arrived, the health system was ready. They have not been challenged to defend this view because the debate never asks scientists difficult questions.

An example is the claim (which she later clarified) by Professor Glenda Gray, chair of the country’s Medical Research Council, that Soweto’s Baragwanath hospital had no malnutrition cases before the lockdown. By Ramaphosa’s own admission, SA did not use its lockdown to establish the testing and tracing capacity that allowed some countries to beat back Covid-19.

But, outside Western Cape, it restricted cases to about 11,000 and under 200 deaths by the end of May, figures similar to South Korea’s successful fight against the virus. Even in the Western Cape, there are a few hundred deaths, not the thousands seen elsewhere.

The lockdown has been effective enough to ensure its opponents can demand an end to restrictions without seeming callous. But it isn’t effective enough to ensure the drop in infections and deaths that the WHO — and, initially, the chair of SA’s medical advisory council — say are needed to phase out restrictions. The legitimacy that comes from victory over the virus is unvailable and official insistence that the restrictions are not meant to stop transmission has handed opponents a reason to demand they end even as infections keep rising.

Legitimacy has not been eroded among most citizens, who remain deeply concerned about Covid-19. But it has been weakened enough in the policy debate to create an orgy of interest group lobbying for an end to restrictions.

Business began pressing for freedom to operate and has largely succeeded. This set off a chain reaction. This has replaced the veneer of science shrouding government decisions; concessions seem based purely on who shouts loudest.

Domestic business travel is allowed, which may allow the virus to spread; religious services are opened though they have been prime spreaders of the virus everywhere; the state has tried to open schools though nearly 2,000 Covid-19 cases are below age 19. Only the tobacco ban remains.

But the legitimacy of measures to fight Covid-19 are more important than ever because the only chance of curbing it is strict observance of health measures. The state is reduced to doing what it always does when it loses control — telling citizens they must look after themselves. Because people are worried by Covid-19, many may do that. But, if the virus’s spread is stopped, it will be because people fear it, not because they believe government measures are legitimate.

This might have been avoided if the state paid as much attention to knowledge of society as it says it pays to science.

Steven Friedman is a professor of political studies at the University of Johannesburg. This article was originally published in The Conversation

The ‘nanny state’ argument expresses a belief that some of us should not be told what to do by those they consider their inferiors