EDITORIAL: Let’s open up, but safety first
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If, as expected, President Cyril Ramaphosa does announce the opening of the rest of the economy this week, he might channel the British economist John Maynard Keynes and say when facts change, he changes his mind.
The businesses that have been on the receiving end of some of the less comprehensible lockdown regulations will probably beg to differ, even as they heave a sigh of relief that the government is finally listening.
For workers, investors and executives in tourism, alcohol, tobacco and airline industries — who hope Ramaphosa is about to announce that their companies can reopen — this will matter little in the end. In the ensuing relief, there might even be a return to the blaze of national goodwill that characterised the early stages of the lockdown.
Then, it was easy for most companies to praise Ramaphosa for acting quickly to contain the pandemic because the logic for the full lockdown in March was seen as unassailable. SA, for the most part, acted in line with international best practice and was, for the most part, praised in relation to floundering leadership in countries such as Brazil, the UK and the US.
The idea behind Ramaphosa’s risk-adjusted lockdown strategy was simple: buy time for virology experts to line up our health-care resources against Covid-19 and limit the economic cost of the order.
Then came arbitrary and nonsensical rules such as the initial ban on e-commerce retail and roast chicken at supermarkets. Subsequent steps to relax the regulations were marred by the supremacy of lobbyists’ interests rather than the health imperatives.
Despite all of that, the trajectory of the disease has given Ramaphosa cover to say the strategy is working. For the last few days, the daily confirmed infection cases have hovered around 3,000 compared with about 10,000 a week ago, prompting health minister Zweli Mkhize to proclaim a declining trend.
Ramaphosa can also hold up some half-full temporary medical facilities such as the one in Nasrec, Johannesburg, that the country’s health facilities are unlikely to be overwhelmed as had been feared when he imposed the lockdown. In addition, a field hospital in Cape Town is being dismantled and shipped to the Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal hospitals should be able to cope, Mkhize told the Sunday Times last week.
His critics, of course, will argue that none of this should be news and only confirms that he imposed too high ...
The businesses that have been on the receiving end of some of the less comprehensible lockdown regulations will probably beg to differ, even as they heave a sigh of relief that the government is finally listening.
For workers, investors and executives in tourism, alcohol, tobacco and airline industries — who hope Ramaphosa is about to announce that their companies can reopen — this will matter little in the end. In the ensuing relief, there might even be a return to the blaze of national goodwill that characterised the early stages of the lockdown.
Then, it was easy for most companies to praise Ramaphosa for acting quickly to contain the pandemic because the logic for the full lockdown in March was seen as unassailable. SA, for the most part, acted in line with international best practice and was, for the most part, praised in relation to floundering leadership in countries such as Brazil, the UK and the US.
The idea behind Ramaphosa’s risk-adjusted lockdown strategy was simple: buy time for virology experts to line up our health-care resources against Covid-19 and limit the economic cost of the order.
Then came arbitrary and nonsensical rules such as the initial ban on e-commerce retail and roast chicken at supermarkets. Subsequent steps to relax the regulations were marred by the supremacy of lobbyists’ interests rather than the health imperatives.
Despite all of that, the trajectory of the disease has given Ramaphosa cover to say the strategy is working. For the last few days, the daily confirmed infection cases have hovered around 3,000 compared with about 10,000 a week ago, prompting health minister Zweli Mkhize to proclaim a declining trend.
Ramaphosa can also hold up some half-full temporary medical facilities such as the one in Nasrec, Johannesburg, that the country’s health facilities are unlikely to be overwhelmed as had been feared when he imposed the lockdown. In addition, a field hospital in Cape Town is being dismantled and shipped to the Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal hospitals should be able to cope, Mkhize told the Sunday Times last week.
His critics, of course, will argue that none of this should be news and only confirms that he imposed too high ...
