What now
feels like a very long time ago, just after President Cyril had placed the
nation into a State of Disaster, that someone asked very sarcastically what possibly
could go wrong with the forthcoming mixture of authoritarianism and ignorance. What
an excellent question. The answers and our experiences six weeks later, exceed
anyone’s worst nightmares. And the dreadful thing is that no one seems to be in
charge. There are for example so many ministers deserving to be fired
immediately. This week it’s a race between Lindiwe Sisulu whose department of
water and sanitation has burned through billions of wasteful expenditure and Pravin
Gordhan who is ignoring the advice of his own appointed experts and wants to
revive SAA.
More than two
weeks ago our President appeared on the TV screens to tell us, his employers,
what in his opinion, is and should be going on. That was the speech where he
announced a relaxing of portions of the lockdown which would include the sale
of tobacco products. On this last item he amazingly was trumped a day later by cabinet
minister NDZ citing the support of just 2000 petitioners and Cyril hasn’t been
seen or heard of since. This incident
has prompted South Africans to do what they love and that is to send in lawyers
to challenge their government (the reverse is also a popular use of taxpayers
funds) only to be told that the minutes of the meetings of the National Command
Council are classified. What!? The courts are now busy with that one too.
Anyone with
an internet connection and a morbid fascination for sifting fake news from the
truth can easily while away the days of the lockdown alternately cringing in
horror and crying with emotion. There are few highlights but the movie clip of
the fit athlete sprinting away from a chubby cop on a beach in the Cape is pure
gold. Overseas readers will be interested to learn that our government has
declared the beach and the sea itself out of bounds, even to those taking
advantage of the daily three hour curfew exercise break in the overall lockdown.
By the way, someone has declared that exercise
must involve moving one’s whole body, so yoga and the like won’t do and practitioners
of these activities in public have been arrested.
Perhaps the
central concern for us all is the lack of information about the data, methods, results
and conclusions being used by who to form the strategy to get the country back
to normal as soon as possible. The state is the sole custodian and distributor
of all data relating to the incidence and spread of the corona virus so it is
difficult for anyone else to corroborate the medical conclusions and social
engineering attempts being derived therefrom. Much of the world is basing its responses
on work published by the infamous Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College
London. The technique appears to be variations of the lockdown scenario which in
South Africa is having the utterly appalling effect of plunging many millions
of people into starvation. This is exacerbated by the inability of politicians
and officials to curb their own propensity to steal and loot supplies being
donated to help the sufferers. Add to which the racist elements in government
see this as an excellent opportunity to punish the minority groups. That our
leaders appear to see no crisis deserving anything more than a huge military
mobilisation is very alarming.
SPORT
SECTION: Prof Ferguson already has poor form in interpreting biological data as
he was largely responsible for turning an outbreak of foot and mouth disease
into a country-wide disaster in the UK in 2001. His current work on the virus is
also alleged to be shoddy. Plus the prof has manged to introduce an element of
scandal so beloved of the Brits in connection with their heroes. He broke the
lockdown in order to visit his lover – who, nudge, nudge is a married woman!
James
Greener
Friday 8th
May 2020
