DA desperately scrambling for relevance – SACP statement

Over the past several weeks in the midst of our novel coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown the DA has been desperately scrambling for relevance. The DA has clearly been deeply miffed that President Ramaphosa’s initial announcement of a lock-down and his subsequent appearances have generally been met with overwhelming public support, not least in the middle-class suburbs the DA believes are its own.

Having heard President Ramaphosa indicate that changes to regulations affecting exercise and e-commerce are imminent, what does the DA do? Its leader, John Steenhuisen jumps on to the bandwagon and announces it is taking government to court to enforce changes to exercise and e-commerce lock-down regulations. Having heard Ramaphosa announce that within two weeks the country will move to alert level three, what does the DA do? DA Western Cape premier Alan Winde calls for level three to be implemented.

For weeks Winde (now under self-quarantine at home in Cape Town) has been insisting against all the evidence that Cape Town is not the current epicentre of the pandemic, despite recording around half of all the Covid-19 deaths in South Africa. We are not remotely suggesting that Cape Town is the current epicentre because it is under DA administration – that would be just as facile as Winde’s attempts at denial. What we are pointing out is that a response to the pandemic requires rising above pathetic attempts at petty party political one-upmanship. It requires a common concerted South African and international effort.

It requires an understanding that globally we are dealing with a virus about which much is not known. Getting the right balance between lockdown and re-opening the economy is never going to be an exact science. There will inevitably be debates and differences, including among the scientific community itself and, for that matter, within national government itself. But the DA should have the honesty to have a deep look at itself before pointing fingers. One of their court challenges relates to the current nightly curfew. But who was the first to call for a Covid-19 curfew? It was none other than City of Cape Town DA councillor (and effective mayor) JP Smith.

While we should all condemn human rights abuses by the police and defence where such occur, the City of Cape Town administration still insists (notwithstanding a court decision to the contrary) that its metro police were within their rights in cruelly demolishing shacks in Khayelitsha in the midst of the lockdown. It persists in seeking to prevent Human Rights Commission observers from monitoring the confinement of homeless people, claiming that this Chapter 9 institution, answerable only to parliament, must first ask the administration permission to do so.

Let us all work to flatten the curve of the pandemic, not each others’ party political popularity curve.

We need social cohesion across all walks of life and maximum compliance with the hygiene standards recommended by the World Health Organisation, as well as with the associated lockdown regulations enacted by government to flatten the Covid-19 curve.

In the same vein, the SACP reiterates its call for zero tolerance against abuse and acts of irregular and corrupt conduct allegedly committed in the fight to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus. In combating such social ills and tackling the dangerous twin dangers of populism and opportunism, we need to continue building maximum unity against the scourge of gender-based violence which also stands in our way in the fight to contain Covid-19.

LET US MAINTAIN PHYSICAL DISTANCING WITH SOCIAL SOLIDARITY.

Statement issued by SACP, 15 May 2020