OPINIONISTA: We are citizens, not subjects of South Africa, even during a global pandemic By GAVIN DAVIS gavdavis
When news of a coronavirus emerged out of China at the end of 2019, many South Africans dismissed it as one of those occasional and exotic outbreaks that doesn’t happen here. Talk of bats, pangolins and wet markets underscored how far removed the coronavirus was from our lives.
The president has deployed the army to make sure everybody complies with the rules. Government has instructed all epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists not to talk publicly on Covid-19. And there are worrying reports that government has expropriated privately-owned cellphone data to track people’s movements.
Residents of informal settlements, facing 21 days confined to small shacks, ponder how they are going to obey the rules while sharing a communal tap with thousands of others. Many people don’t seem to be aware of the new rules, or don’t seem to care. Visuals of youngsters partying well into the night on the first day of lockdown sparked outrage and the inevitable clampdown. Evidence of police and army brutality is dismissed by some as the security forces just doing their jobs.
But equally, concerns over the impact of the lockdown on our economy, our social fabric and our constitutional order cannot be dismissed. Let’s be under no illusions here: The human cost of the lockdown will be devastating. If it goes on too long, we may never recover.
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