As the Covid-19 lockdown grinds on, we’re seeing a growing number of calls for it to end. Here’s why the critics are right – and wrong.
Let’s start with the basics.
Critics rightly point out that the economic consequences of the lockdown are going to be exceedingly painful. This is undeniably true.
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However, we must keep in mind that lifting the Covid-19 lockdown is not going to solve our economic problems. Tourists will not flood back into SA from Europe and China. International trade will not bounce back up to 2019 levels. Global bond markets will not open the taps to reward us for ending lockdown.
In fact, we risk the opposite – if lockdown is lifted and SA is ravaged by Covid-19 the way that Brazil is being ravaged, the economic consequences of lifting the lockdown could be even more devastating than those of the lockdown itself. Mass deaths in townships will not improve SA’s economic prospects. Anyone arguing for an end to the Covid-19 lockdown must be able to explain exactly why we won’t face the Brazil scenario, where crowded living conditions and a poor public health system seem to be creating the bones of a true disaster.
Critics also, for some reason, often bring up state capture and corruption. While these issues have undoubtedly contributed to SA’s public health inadequacies and economic weakness, they are not really a factor in how rapidly viruses replicate or the mechanisms they use to do so. As the world clearly illustrates, Covid-19 is infecting countries renowned for their clean and responsive governments just as quickly as those renowned for their corruption. It turns out that good ethics are not the same as a vaccine.
Obviously, state capture was reprehensible and those responsible should be in jail. However, bringing this issue up in the context of Covid-19 strategy is a straw man, meant to discredit the government while having nothing much to do with how we should fight Covid-19. It doesn’t help us move forward in this crisis.
Now, here are some of the things that the critics have right.
Some of the rules of the SA Covid-19 lockdown really don’t make sense.
Take, for example, the decision to ban the sale of alcohol and the strange three-hour exercise window. These are not really sensible policies. Banning alcohol and cigarette sales will most likely simply boost illicit sales of these products. This robs legitimate sellers of revenues and the government of sin taxes. Better to sell the stuff as legitimately as possible.
The three-hour exercise window is also really odd. Why go to such great lengths to make sure that people are all out at the same time? It seems likely the goal is to make it easier to police the rules. But a more sensible approach would be what has been done in much of Europe – you can exercise outdoors withing 2-5km of your home (varies by country). The cops can spot check people to make sure they’re sticking to the rules, and runners and cyclists can stagger their exercise times to avoid busy streets.
Yet another mystery is the attitude towards online shopping. There’s no reason that online shopping should be banned, provided workers involved are given adequate protections – face masks, hand sanitiser, and the ability to remain physically distant from co-workers and clients. Online shopping could, in fact, be a lifeline for SA businesses that are facing total revenue losses.
South Africa’s rich suburbanites – largely but not exclusively white – are understandably annoyed by these seemingly bizarre restrictions. Easing these rules, making life more convenient for SA’s top 10% (which, if you’re reading this, probably means you), would go a long way to reducing calls for an end to lockdown and to making it more palatable for SA’s haves.
But here’s the thing, and the real reason the Covid-19 lockdown isn’t up to the job. Neither these rules, nor their easing, nor the lifting of lockdown, nor its continuation will actually do what we need them to do. The simple reality is that SA’s most vulnerable are just as vulnerable under lockdown as they would be without it. Lockdown is all but meaningless in informal settlements, where people lack the running water and soap necessary for handwashing, share communal toilets, and live in tiny, one-room dwellings.
The SA government is trying to make a single policy for such vastly different groups of people that they may as well occupy different planets. SA’s rich upper crust seldom encounter members of the public. They drive from spacious homes to offices to the mall, without sitting on crowded buses or walking along packed streets. Their risk of infection is objectively quite low and manageable with minimal safety measures. So, for them, lockdown is an illogical thing, a cure far worse than the disease.
But the vast majority of South Africans don’t have these luxuries. They live in crowded dwellings, ten people to a room in some cases. They travel on packed taxis. They share facilities – toilets, shops, public spaces – with huge crowds. They have unmanaged health conditions and high rates of HIV and TB infection, and little access to health services. They are profoundly vulnerable to a fast-spreading illness like Covid-19.
The government is trying to create policies to prevent disaster in the places many wealthy South Africans pretend don’t exist. What truly undermines the logic of the lockdown is that it isn’t doing the job. Locked down informal settlement residents are pretty much living the way they did before lockdown, only without jobs.
I don’t know what the right answer is. I think that the strategy of trying to prevent travel across borders – the borders of towns, provinces, and neighbourhoods – is probably the best way to contain outbreaks in these conditions. Rather than isolating households, the SA government is isolating communities from one another. This has the potential to contain the spread of the disease between, if not within communities. It’s not really enough, but better options are hard to see.
There are no easy conclusions to make here, no easy answers. Some of SA’s stranger restrictions should be eased, if only to reduce the complaints. People who can travel by car and run their businesses with physical distancing firmly in place should probably be allowed to do so if they can act like adults about it. Cases should be found and isolated. Massive financial aid, as much as possible, should be poured out. And communities should be kept apart so that we can, hopefully, keep most – but not all – of the most vulnerable people safe. Hopefully, we can hold on until we know more about how to fight this thing and win.
