News just in. The President is doing a thing at lunchtime:
Sadly, also happening at 12h00 – loadshedding:
Which will prevent me from watching, and which will also prevent any “swift and lasting economic recovery”.
Who’s going to tell him? (Both bits.)
With due respect to The 438 Game and that guy in Forries who called it.
Just over a week ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation regarding the Covid-19 situation here. I don’t need to go back over that speech because firstly, there wasn’t much to it, and secondly, I covered just how pathetic it was right here.
Suffice to say, the only two interventions he made in the face of a clearly incoming third wave of infections were to reduce the numbers permitted at gatherings to 250 outdoors and 100 indoors, and to extend the curfew by 1 hour: from midnight until 4am to 11pm until 4am. I commented at the time that these were unlikely to make any difference to the very worrying situation and were really just to make it look like the government were doing something. The gatherings numbers were still far too high to limit any potential spread and the extra hour would just hurt businesses that little bit more without making any difference to the number of infections.
And that’s if any of the regulations were being effectively observed, policed and enforced anyway. (They’re not.)
Unsurprisingly, the rate of new infections since the speech has increased across seven of the nine provinces. The only two outliers in this regard were the two smallest (by population) provinces: Northern Cape and Free State, which were – for the first time in their existences – both ahead of the curve for something. Sadly, it turned out to be the third wave.
The rest of the country, in which 95% of the population lives, showed dramatic increases across the board:
Not pretty, but not exactly much of a shock, either.
So, as before the speech (and as before the second wave), Ramaphosa has a decision to make: either a stricter lockdown or a more deadly third wave. I’ve said before that I won’t get into the argument of whether lockdowns are a good thing or not, and I’ve also said that I am very glad I’m not having to navigate a country through a pandemic.
But they’re getting paid the big bucks (and sharing the funds with their comrades) for this sort of thing, and they really should be doing much better.
Last week’s speech was never going to do anything but harm. And so it has proved.
Graphs from Sugan Naidoo
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I’m no fan of any political party here in SA. Maybe not even anywhere else either.
But I’m in SA and so I’m concentrating more on the political parties here. For those of you not in the know, here’s a quick run down of the top 6 parties here:
The ANC is broken, horribly corrupt and is failing the country.
The DA is full of itself, despite continually lurching from one PR disaster to another.
The EFF is loudmouthed, flipflopping populist extremism in a red boiler suit.
The IFP has no bearing on anything (and therefore no relevance) outside KwaZulu-Natal.
The FF+ is the diametric opposite of (and therefore ironically also exactly the same as) the EFF.
And the ACDP is basically full of Donald Trump wannabes without the orange tan and the dodgy wig.
It’s not a pretty line up.
But enough of the prologue. On with the story.
It’s become ever so trendy on social media lately to shoot down anything that the DA says. If you refer to my quick – yet surprisingly accurate – guide above, you’ll note that the DA is adept at shooting themselves in their collective feet, so fairly often, this criticism is tautologically warranted and deserved, but equally, quite a lot of the time, it’s just trolling by people trying to look cool.
But they do look ever so cool when they do it. I, for one, always admire their actions.
Last night, we had another address from the President regarding the current coronavirus situation. We’re well into the start of our third wave now, and our vaccination rollout is some way behind where we’d like it to (or where it should) be. Oh, and the Health Minister – ostensibly leading our fight against Covid – is embroiled in a corruption scandal:
To be fair, we don’t have anywhere to go to save ourselves from the third wave. We simply can’t afford another hard lockdown, and we’ve become blasé about precautions to protect each other from the virus, because there’s been no peak in the virus for a while, because there’s zero respect for those making the rules, because the rules are too lax, and because there’s zero enforcement.
But last night’s address was particularly pathetic: “Social events are driving Covid infections.” Well, sure they are – just like last time – but see above. And look again at the new restrictions you’ve put on them: 100 people indoors, 250 outdoors. Ridiculous numbers. That’s not going to help.
An extra hour added to the curfew.
Why? To look like you’re doing something? No. It looks like you’ve got no clue, no plan, no idea where to go, and you’re just chucking out some extra rule because you can. How will it make any difference? It won’t.
A reminder to wear masks in public (but see above).
Apparently, things are going well with the vaccination programme, but The West stole all the vaccines.
Oh, and on the Mkhize corruption allegations?
Nothing. Nada. Dololo. Zilch.
And so, when a DA MP tweeted this after the event:
And despite desperately wanting to be one of the cool cats, I find it very hard to disagree with what he says.
It’s not a great time to be in SA right now.
SA politics is rarely dull. Some people might say that this is a good thing, and represents a young, vibrant democracy, constantly evaluating and questioning itself. And yes, that would be a good thing, but it does seem to be mainly widespread corruption and intra-party mud slinging which is taking the centre stage, while actually serving the country (which really, really needs serving), falls by the wayside.
The most recent infighting is within the governing party, the ANC, who are happily fiddling while Rome has no decent housing, a disastrous education system, zero unemployment prospects, an upcoming third wave of Covid-19 (now closer than ever) and plenty of crumbling infrastructure.
Still, while we’re concentrating on their petty squabbles, we’re not talking about all that other stuff, are we?
And I don’t use the term “petty squabbles” lightly, because while the consequences of their collective actions might be very serious indeed, it’s hard not to crack a faint grin at their playground posturing.
The latest episode (coming a whole day after the previous episode) concerns ANC Secretary General Elias “Ace” Magashule. He’s likely bent as a 12 Rand note, having been charged with fraud, corruption and money-laundering. Taking decisive (cough) action, (some of) the rest of the ANC leadership gave him 30 days to step aside from his post for the duration of his trial. That 30 days has just expired and Ace is still there. And so the President suspended him.
And Ace then suspended the President. “Lol”.
Cyril is having none of it. And rightly so, it seems, because while Ace says that Cyril has no right to suspend him, Cyril does have (the majority of) the NEC on his side. Ace has… well… himself. And constitutionally (that’s the ANC Constitution, not the National one), he doesn’t even have himself, because he’s been suspended.
Ace has as much power to suspend the President as my beagle has.
Lots of enthusiasm, lots of noise, zero understanding of how the actual political system works.
Loves free treats.
And so the ANC fragmentation merry-go-round continues, with some heavyweights and branches coming out in support of Magashule, more of them defending Ramaphosa, and local political commentators wasting no time at all in invoking Godwin’s Law.
All of this chaos must be like manna from heaven for the opposition, right?
Well, sure, if they were able to utilise it to strengthen their position. Sadly (I say sadly because a decent, strong opposition is hugely important to any country, and not because of any personal political affiliation), they are so incompetent that they’re actually going down in the polls despite the complete and utter fuckshow happening up top.
And why? Because of crap leadership and… gosh… political infighting within the party.
It all comes down to the cult of personality over actual ability to do the job they are elected and mandated to do. In a recent small scale study, an orange TV host was elected President of a powerful North American country, despite having no demonstrable political ability at all. The world watched on.
It did not end well.
I’m not saying that we’re quite at that level of disaster yet, but until we get leaders who are more concerned with leading the country than their own parties and personal position and wealth, we’re going nowhere except backwards.
It’s very frustrating, hugely costly and thoroughly depressing.
For a while, at least? Maybe.
Holidays start today in SA. Not officially, and not for everyone, but The Day of Reconciliation (that was today) does generally mark some sort of beginning to the summer holiday season.
The festive period is always a bit weird: it’s hot and sunny, which it clearly shouldn’t be at Christmas time and all our routines are swept away for a few weeks: Kids at home. Me at home. Dog at home. Wife at work. Playdates, restaurants, shopping, general socialising.
Fun.
This year: nope. It’s everybody at home (even though the wife is still at work). We’ve got a couple of (outdoor, socially-distanced) things that still have to be done and then and we’re all holing up as the second wave hits Cape Town. Early days, but it does already appear to be much more severe than our initial problems in May, June and July.
President Ramaphosa swung into action once again with targeted measures aimed mainly at reducing superspreader events. And I get it – to a certain extent – but once again, there does seem to be a degree of irrationality when 100 people are still allowed to gather indoors, but all the beaches in KZN, the Eastern Cape (definitely outdoors – I’ve been there) and the Garden Route are closed.
Better policing and enforcement of the regulations would be a much better way of going about things, but our police force is understaffed, overwhelmed, dysfunctional and aggressive. And while I can understand why you can’t just close some of the beaches in a given area (because then everyone would just go to the ones that were open), this is a lazy catch-all which has understandably angered many people – and merely driven everyone to other venues in the tourist areas: at least some of which will be indoors.
In KZN, the beaches are only closed on those days on which the majority of poorer people traditionally go there. And yes, the beaches on those days are horrifically overcrowded and would likely be very unsafe from a Covid point of view, those people are now going to stay in their horrifically overcrowded residential areas which are very unsafe from a Covid point of view. This doesn’t help much at all.
We’re in the Western Cape, where our beaches are still open – bizarrely only between 9am and 6pm – concentrating the crowds as much as possible. But it’s unlikely that we’ll be spending much time there.
It’s going to be a surreal summer: no extended family, limited travel, no socialising.
It’s a pain. It’s sad. It’s irritating. But it is just one year.