Members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) stand guard at a roadblock on the N2 near Khayelitsha, March 2020 – Photo by Roger Sedres
Members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) stand guard at a roadblock on the N2 near Khayelitsha, March 2020 – Photo by Roger Sedres
President Cyril Ramaphosa has the toughest job in South Africa right now. The head of state will be addressing South Africans later on Tuesday, revealing a number of social and economic relief programmes to help citizens through this crisis. But rumours of a lockdown extension refuse to disappear.
Many fear that the briefing will be used to add more weeks on to our current period of lockdown. Due to end on Friday 1 May, Ramaphosa’s planned announcement has left a few of us spooked.
Although we’re not expecting him to make an announcement on these regulations tonight, he does have a major decision to make soon. In nine days’ time, South Africa will be on its last day of ‘collective house arrest’. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of extending the lockdown once more? We’ve got the main arguments here:
South Africa went into lockdown before recording a single death from the deadly disease. Cases simply have not risen how they were expected to, thanks largely to this early decision. Only a few thousand positive tests have been reported in Mzansi, which is much lower than what we’ve seen in Europe, North America and Asia.
This one speaks for itself. The likes of New Zealand, Germany and South Korea, lauded for their response to the global health crisis, implemented several lockdown extensions to keep deaths and cases to a minimum.
Remember why we’re doing this: The most important thing for South Africa is to keep its hospitals up and running without being driven past their holding capacity. The longer the lockdown, the fewer positive cases there are to report, freeing up beds for patients – and this lifts an enormous burden on our healthcare facilities.
This illness does not move, but rather, people move the illness. With the green shoots of success already visible in South Africa, another week or two behind closed doors could be manageable if our case numbers and the death toll remain low on a comparatively global scale.
One thing we’re seeing is that there are still mass gatherings in our townships, as some people are forced to make the choice between getting sick or going without food. The disease is likely to hit these settlements badly over the next month or so, and more time in isolation might be required to confront this crisis.
Lockdown means shutting businesses and closing huge sections of South Africa’s frail economy. In fact, the state of our fiscal structures means that we may no longer have a say in the matter. Another lockdown extension past 1 May has the potential to irreparably devastate industry in this country.
We need to consider the toll that a lockdown extension could take on mental health, too. People will have been stuck inside for five weeks before this current period comes to an end. Anything longer could create a crisis within a crisis, severely impacting on the mental well-being of many South Africans.
Some in the scientific community believe that a second wave of the disease is unavoidable, and keeping populations isolated for long periods of time could mean that more people are infected later in the year. It’s been suggested that a lockdown extension may have a detrimental effect over the long-term.
No-one knows what the ideal lockdown length is. No-one knows what the long-term effects are. And certainly, no-one knows when this nightmare will finish. There’s a sad truth which suggests this illness cannot be avoided indefinitely, and because we know so little about the disease, staying in lockdown for long periods may not be justifiable.