Take charge, Mr President, and focus your ministers’ minds on what matters

No political leader wants to be blamed for causing many thousands of deaths. But if SA doesn’t get more strategic about the lockdown, and speedily, our leaders will have to take responsibility for many hundreds of thousands of deaths — many from Covid-19 but many more from hunger and malnutrition as well as conditions such as diabetes, HIV, TB and cancer, many of which are going untreated during the crisis. When SA first went into lockdown six weeks ago we looked good. SA was ahead of the curve, taking early action to prevent the spread of the virus. There was broad public support for the restrictions. President Cyril Ramaphosa and health minister Zweli Mkhize outlined a clear strategic rationale for the lockdown, which aimed primarily to contain transmission so as to give SA’s health-care system the time to prepare for the virus.

Six weeks on and it’s no longer clear precisely what we are trying to achieve, nor how we will know when we achieve it. And though the virus is now starting to spread rapidly, the toll level 4 is taking on SA’s economy and its citizens is rising even more rapidly. And while the frightening peak of Covid-19 is yet to come, the trade-offs are becoming ever more stark. A quarter of the people the HSRC surveyed in late March — and more than half of those in informal settlements — already said they didn’t have money for food. That can only have got worse, and malnourished people are in no state to fight off the virus, or other diseases. Many shut-down businesses could survive the first five weeks and pay workers at least in part, but they can’t survive much more than that; business failures will increase and so too will joblessness, with estimates that as many as 5-million to 7-million jobs will be lost if the lockdown is prolonged.

SA is headed for an economic catastrophe from which it may never recover: the economy could contract by as much as 17% if we don’t reopen it more swiftly, and will take years to get back to where it was before the crisis; the government’s deficit is going to balloon and

SA will be living with a huge public debt burden for years. Nor has an incompetent state proved particularly good at delivering the relief promised in terms of the

R500bn stimulus package — witness the debacle this week when Sassa couldn’t pay social grants in two provinces, or that the UIF took six weeks to pay just

R7bn of the R40bn set aside for workers impacted by the crisis. Not only are lives and livelihoods being hit hard, but democracy too is being undermined as the police and the army impose lockdown rules on township folk at gunpoint. It feels like things are starting to fall apart — with the risk social unrest will rise and the lockdown will lose legitimacy just when we most need to contain the virus.

Not that SA shouldn’t still be in some form of lockdown. Reopening the economy too fast could risk an explosive spread in the virus. It makes sense to do this gradually, with careful monitoring. But our cabinet ministers — with trade & industry minister Ebrahim Patel the kingpin — have taken a hugely bureaucratic, command-and-control approach to the lockdown levels, which is simply not workable. Too often they use the lockdown to pursue their own particular ideological objectives. The ban on tobacco is one instance; Patel’s irrational ban on e-commerce on “competition” grounds is another, a dangerous instance which has seen people flock to shopping malls in level 4 instead of staying safely at home while their winter clothes or whatever are delivered; and Patel and Fikile Mbalula have between them changed the rules on a key export — wine — three times. Worse, Patel has breezily dismissed concerns about the economic catastrophe, while his colleagues dismiss concerns about police brutality.

We can’t go back to normal in the near future. But the economy needs to be reopened as speedily and sensibly and safely as possible, in line with a clear set of priorities. Ramaphosa needs to rein in his warring ministers and focus their minds on what matters. Take charge, Mr President.

It’s no longer clear precisely what we are trying to achieve