Skip to main content

Level 3 lockdown: roll out the mortuary vans

Last night President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown would be reduced to level 3, including the Western Cape which has highest infections, in a bid to get the economy moving again.

Reducing restrictions to level 3 may be pragmatic, as it's being called, but see the infection numbers rise again. Government gave in - the rational among us are glad the decision is not ours - to the end lockdown movement. The awful decision of staying alive and keeping one's job, and for companies profitability, has been made. A bad decision, but not an easy one.

But one can be certain when infections and deaths rise - "bring out the mortuary vans" as the director-general of health Dr Anban Pillay said in yesterday's Sunday Times to a question about the economy - and overwhelm the health system and society and economy tries to cope, the end lockdown cabal - the elite, privileged and executives - shall be silent, hiding as always in their bunkers. 

Government will be blamed, as they are now for imposing the lockdown which has saved lives. No sympathy shall be extended to the sick and for dead - the brown and black workers on the factory and shop floors and in supermarkets which are the vectors for the disease.

We shall not wait long to find out. I wonder what the end lockdown advocates including media (News24, Tiso, Biznews, Politicsweb), DA, IRR, FMF, Allan Gray and overnight expert commentators shall say then. In their complicity, nothing.

Having got what they wanted, employers are obligated to issue workers with full PPE, not only masks and sanitisers as they've been doing, and ensure proper distancing which many are not at present, or face criminal prosecution. The virus is not going to go away soon.

No country except the US (of course) has done what SA is doing: ending lockdown while the infections curve, especially WC, has not flattened. It may be a calamity. I hope, but fear not, the country is prepared.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clean audits: much ado about nothing

 Auditor-general of South Africa Tsakani Maluleke recently released the results of 2023/24 municipal audits. Only 34 municipalities received a clean audit. Clean audit is an SA public audit definition of: financially unqualified and full compliance with legislation (mainly but not exclusively PFMA, MFMA and Treasury regulations) and auditee's ie client's own performance objectives. Incidentally, on the objectives, the AG takes the client's word for their completion or not; it's a tick-box exercise for AG as most of auditing is.  When Helen "Godzille" Zille was Western Cape premier she railed against audits as being an obstacle to efficient administration (really). She used the example of missing library books in the AG's audit of the WC Library department's financials. This was ignorant nonsense. Government departments, politicians and media get in a froth about "clean audits". When government audit results are released, media and politicians...
Post a Comment
Read more

Western Cape Health has no jurisdiction over its doctors, senior official claims

On Wednesday June 1, Western Cape Health Department's (WCHD) officer Dr Saadiq Kariem was interviewed on CapeTalk about access to chronic medications for WCHD patients. He spoke of two options: collection at a department facility or delivery to their homes. He made it sound so easy. He didn't mention, though, that at many community health clinics aka day hospitals there's a wait, often hours, to simply collect medicines even when clinics already have patients' current scripts on file. I myself tried that - the first time and last time I'd been to a clinic for collection - but left after two hours without even being attended to. I buy my meds which fortunately are not the expensive kind. People cannot take off hours every month merely to collect meds but the poor have no alternative. I gather problems may be clinic specific. On a related matter, during an after hours phone call that weekend, Groote Schuur Hospital's chief operating officer Dr Belinda Jacobs told ...
1 comment
Read more

Did Beth Engelbrecht jump or was she pushed from a burning platform?

Beth Engelbrecht was head of Western Cape Health Department (WCHD) from 2014 to 2020. Her predecessor Craig Househam ran the department from the late 90s. She was succeeded by Keith Cloete from 1 April 2020.  Engelbrecht's departure was a quiet affair. There was a press briefing January 2020 where Cloete was introduced as her successor (at the Western Cape Government's request, she remained to assist him with the COVID pandemic) but no articles in mainstream media about her tenure. The briefing concentrated on Cloete's and department's priorities.  The absence of press coverage was odd because she held a very important post. Compare that to the fulsome articles when Groote Schuur Hospital CEO Bhavna Patel retired in 2024 and about Eastern Cape health head Rolene Wagner's suspension and reinstatement. WCHD's Jonga Magazine (issue 24, 17 March 2020) ran a farewell message from Engelbrecht in which she wished Cloete well and thanked the department, MEC Nomafrench M...
Post a Comment
Read more