Lockdown or not, freedom in SA is a fairy tale

Besides showing us how to effectively bugger up the world economy in just two months, what the Covid-19 lockdown also taught us is how valuable freedom of movement is.

The outdoor people among us missed the beach, while the couch potatoes just missed the idea of being able to go to a beach if ever they wished to do so.

It was a case of you could look at the warm, golden sand, but step on it and you risked sharing the Bheki Cele suite at the Westville Correctional Resort with a serial rapist.

It reminded a lot of the Group Areas Act under apartheid…

Luckily we’re almost through it, and we will soon be completely free again like before the lockdown restrictions.

But were we really free before lockdown?

Could SA women, before the lockdown, go where they wanted, whenever they wanted and be safe? Of course not!

A lone woman or even two or three together, were, and still are today, only safe if they are retired assassins or carrying all the armament the SAPS misplaced in recent years.

Most parts of most towns have turned into no-go zones for women for fear of being robbed or harassed.

Hell, even inside ‘safe zones’ such as malls, nowadays, there’s no guarantee that a woman won’t fall prey to some sort of harassment.

Girls, on the other hand, can no longer walk to school without being harassed, and have to either be dropped off or accompanied by a male family member – more proof that our society is as ‘free’ as the inside of a prison.

I recall a time when our family - dad, mom, my sister and myself - would go to the central business district (CBD) on Sunday evenings to do window shopping.

Along with other families, we meandered through the streets.

The children ate ice cream, mom looked at unaffordable dresses and dad looked at unavailable women also doing window shopping with their families.

Those were honest times, for some at least.

If you dare do that today, in any CBD of any town and after dark, you will be robbed at knife point every second step and murdered around every corner – no matter who you are.

So, in reality, we’ve been under lockdown since, well, long before this lockdown, with women stuck in Level 5 indefinitely.

Freedom in SA is wishful thinking.