Hardliners stain Ramaphosa’s mastery
THE South Africa we know and love was cast in a uniquely flawed cauldron.
No surprise that we have to make do with an infuriatingly cracked vessel.
Combine Calvinist Afrikaner self-righteousness, imperialist British hauteur, and traditional African paternalism and this is what you get.
An arrogant, condescending, daddy-knows-better government that treats its adult citizens like kids.
No other government in the world has, in response to a medical emergency, dared peremptorily to decree what its citizens should be allowed to put in their shopping baskets.
Yet here we have a supposedly 21st-century, supposedly democratic government that initially forbade the purchase of alcohol, cigarettes and – that epitome of dangerous indulgence – roast chicken.
Now, after a month of South Africans whining and nagging like tempestuous toddlers, of looted bottle stores and bootlegged cigarettes, a little bit of parental manipulation. Okay, you can have some ciggies but still no booze. And certainly no buffalo wings.
As with all parental manipulation, there’s an implied but indefinitely deferred reward. Maybe, just maybe, if we behave like good little boys and girls, under mommy and daddy’s watchful eye we’ll be allowed a nip of sherry with the Christmas roast.
Or as the president phrased in his national address on Thursday: “The range of goods that may be sold will be extended to incorporate certain additional categories.”
Vexing, small-minded government regulations are not a minor issue. Aside from such irrational proclamations probably being unconstitutional, they go to the heart of something that President Cyril Ramaphosa ironically loves waxing lyrical about: the importance of social compacts.
The social compact concept is simply that nations are governed most successfully when competing groups seek to find common ground rather than to engage in a see-saw of perpetual conflict. It’s the antithesis of decrees from on high of what should be or not be.
Ramaphosa handled the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic firmly but deftly, responding not on the basis of whimsy but on the basis of best scientific advice. The danger, however, was that South Africa would remain frozen for too long in that initially draconian lockdown, which would turn economic damage into economic disaster. That’s thankfully not happened.
What Ramaphosa showed this week was admirable flexibility, an understanding that the situation is nuanced and continuously developing, and that there are very few absolutes. Not even the medical science on the basis of which the total lockdown was initially implemented remains unchallenged.
This is presumably why the government is now going for a “risk-adjusted” strategy of reopening the country and the economy. Some sectors, to be defined, will be allowed to embark on some activity, to be defined. All these concessions are subject to “extreme precautions”, in order to limit community transmission, and will be “measured and incremental”.
The containment measures will be precisely targeted. There is now room for different national, provincial, district and metro regulations and industry bodies have been invited to make input into these changes.
This approach is conceptually sophisticated and based on Ramaphosa’s social compact model of a responsible citizenry. To the relief of the suburbanites who are so roundly scorned on social media, we’ll even be able to exercise in public and walk our dogs.
One can only hope that the new approach will extend to the ban on alcohol, which some in his administration appear to want to continue indefinitely. Prohibition may never have succeeded anywhere, ever, but it is music to the ears of the self-denying, arrogant and paternalistic strands in South Africa’s historical foundry.
That’s not to deny the problems caused by alcohol abuse, which is rife in South Africa. But not all South Africans drink to excess, pulverise their spouses and crash their vehicles.
The alcohol industry and South Africa’s wine growers employ hundreds of thousands of people and moderate alcohol consumption is part of millions of people’s daily lives.
The lack of something more imaginative than the “one size fits all” approach is causing significant damage and irritation.
As an irate correspondent wrote to me: “Dictating the temperature of the food you can buy, what you can drink, what you smoke and how much you can exercise, is so far removed from the objective as to be simply bizarre.”
Time for a tipple, Cyril. Cheers, boet!