Victories, errors in SA's fight

One thing that is guaranteed among all the uncertainties about the Covid-19 pandemic in SA is that it will continue to spread at an even faster rate.

From the start of the pandemic in March, there has been a lot of action by government and people in general to halt the rapid spread of the disease, but it seems this was to no avail.

Did we make any mistakes in our initial response to the pandemic?

Are there things, with the benefit of hindsight of course, we could have done differently to halt the disease in its tracks?

The lockdown, in theory, was an excellent idea, but at some point there was confusion as to what it was meant to achieve. Was the lockdown introduced to eliminate the virus altogether or was it aimed at slowing the rate of infection to manageable levels?

This fundamental question was never adequately answered by government and their regulations and measures put in place mirrored this confusion.

When the lockdown was announced by the president, I honestly believed it would be a real lockdown, intended to not only contain the virus, but to eliminate it altogether like in Wuhan in China.

Enter the ministers who seemed intoxicated by the sudden burst of publicity they were getting from what turned out to be daily media briefings.

They seemed to be competing for prominence and were light on strategic thinking.

I had commented on social media at the time that the pandemic would show, once and for all, if we had capable leadership in this country or not.

Initially, the government showed clear leadership and talked a good game, but as time went on they seemed to become muddled in their thinking. Bheki Cele was obsessed with alcohol sales and consumption, while Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was obsessed with tobacco.

This, unfortunately, overshadowed everything else government sought to achieve, thus losing the respect of many.

For the first 21 days, people were quite willing to forgo any of their liberties as they were convinced of the greater good.

When 21 days became 35 days, they still (by and large) complied, but when ridiculous regulations were later announced, many began questioning these.

I believe we missed the mark by not declaring a state of emergency or something similar on March 25.

I believe if we had a hard lockdown for 21 days and shut down everything, I mean everything, and deployed the soldiers in the streets to enforce it, we would have all but eliminated the virus.

Many people would have suffered a lot of hardship and had food shortages, but by the end of it, I believe, everyone's lives would have returned to some form of normality sooner.

Those concessions to allow cross-border travel for funerals, and so on, hurt us big time. As things stand now, there's no way of knowing what else can be done.