Level 1 comes five months late. Ramaphosa to blame for the avoidable socioeconomic devastation.
17 September 2020
Although it has come far too late, we welcome the move to level 1, including the opening of international borders and lifting of more restrictions on economic and social activity. We repeat our call for the State of Disaster to be ended and the curfew to be lifted fully.
Now that the virus is in retreat, we need to take stock. The DA will call for a parliamentary debate and ad hoc committee to assess the government’s management of South Africa’s Covid response. President Ramaphosa and his government must be held to account for the avoidable socioeconomic devastation which is the net impact of lockdown.
Most of the economy should have been fully opened five months ago when the DA first called for it. It was already clear by mid-April that a severe, prolonged lockdown would have devastating socioeconomic consequences, including thousands of excess deaths to other diseases, millions of livelihoods lost, millions of households plunged deeper into poverty, thousands of businesses destroyed, widening inequality, and billions of rands of tax revenue lost, revenue which should have been pulling people out of poverty.
Every life lost is a human tragedy. Life lost to poverty, other diseases, gender-based violence, suicide, and depression may be harder to quantify than life lost to Covid, especially as these consequences of lockdown will accrue over decades rather than months. But less visible is not less valuable.