Lifting of the hard lockdown comes a full six weeks too late
24 May 2020
The DA welcomes the announcement by the President that large swathes of the economy will be opened up, subject to hygiene, mask and distancing protocols, as we move to Alert Level 3 of the lockdown on 1 June. This is in line with what the DA has called for, repeatedly, for the past month. For clarity on the DA’s position on the Covid19 response and the lockdown crisis, please see our FAQ document here.
While it is critical that we now save what can be saved in our economy, it must be said that by the time Alert Level 3 comes into effect in a week’s time, it will be a full six weeks too late. There was no rational justification to extend the hard lockdown beyond the initial three weeks, and this extension has now caused irreparable damage to our economy. The resulting hardship and suffering – and ultimately, the premature deaths of South African citizens due to this – will have been largely avoidable. Government and President Ramaphosa will need to answer for this.
South Africa has now entered its ninth week of hard lockdown, which makes ours the second-longest lockdown in the world, after only Italy. By 1 June, we will have surpassed Italy. Our economy could barely withstand the initial three weeks. This extension has come at an enormous cost to millions, and there is very little to show for it in return.
For the past month and a half, South Africans have had to sit at home and watch everything they had built up fall apart. Businesses went bust, employees went unpaid, rents accumulated, home loan payments were missed and hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. This figure will soon be millions, as the effects of this lockdown reverberate through our economy. And people did this – they sat at home and watched it collapse – because they were told this was their end of the deal. Their part of the so-called social compact President Ramaphosa speaks of.