As the hour of the great storm nears, we need unity of purpose more than ever
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has largely been praised for its handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Much of this praise relates to the administration acting early to curb the spread of the coronavirus as well as its public commitment to act on the basis of science. But as the lockdown has gone on, passing day 50 this last week, differences have begun to emerge over the government’s current approach. At the centre of the main dispute is whether there is really a need to continue with an economy-crippling lockdown when there seems to be no evidence that continuing with the current approach would significantly reduce the rate of infection.
Ramaphosa is currently locked in meetings with business, labour and civil society, as well as government leaders, where these weighty issues of balancing the need to save lives with that of ensuring continued livelihoods are debated.
Judging by some of the discussions that have been taking place ever since the president’s announcement that most of the country would soon move to level 3 of the lockdown, it is reasonable to expect more restrictions to be lifted, especially for business, by the end of the coming week.
Ramaphosa’s apology and acknowledgement that the government had made mistakes when coming up with some of the unnecessary and onerous regulations that seemed to be motivated by individual ministers’ pet-hate projects, rather than the imperative of fighting the spread of Covid-19, suggest a change of attitude going forward. We can only hope that it marks an end to ministers promulgating unreasonable rules and then refusing to explain and justify their reasons for doing so. It is always important for all, including cabinet ministers, to bear in mind that the initial purpose of the lockdown was to slow down the rate of infection and give the health system enough time to prepare for the coming peak. It was not to take away our hard-won individual freedoms.
But now, given the inevitable reopening of the economy over the next few days and weeks, we need to work closely together to ensure that this is not done in a manner that undermines all the work that has been done to minimise the impact of the pandemic on our society. Key to this would be the co-operation between the government, employers and employees in ensuring that factories and other places of work are safe for staff to return to. Given that the majority of South Africans use public transport — especially the under-regulated taxi industry — to travel to and from work, special attention will have to be paid to this area to prevent massive infections while people are in transit.
But fundamental to the entire strategy should be an aggressive programme of screening and testing to determine the true picture of the pandemic in SA.
There has been a temptation among sections of the political establishment to use the current infection figures, as they relate to provinces, to score cheap political points. This is childish and self-defeating. Instead of arguing about who does the most testing or which province has the highest rate of infections, the provinces should be sharing notes and learning the best practices from each other. If we are going to win this battle, finding the best ways of conducting tests in such a way that we are able to identify hot spots as soon as possible is going to be crucial. As the experience of the neighbouring provinces of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape shows us, the battle against Covid-19 cannot be won in one province and not the other. Instead of arguing about which province has the most hot spots and why, the focus should be on ways to avoid outbreaks in other areas by studying the underlying causes of “hot spots” becoming such.
When the pandemic first reached our shores, political leaders showed unprecedented unity of purpose. We can’t, at the very hour of the coming great storm, start abandoning the united front.
The battle against Covid cannot be won in one province and not the other