The second wave is here – it is economic, and government is causing it - Sakeliga 

17 September 2020

By shifting goalposts and failing to end lockdown, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is producing the real second wave: an economic slump causing lasting declines in living standards and life expectancy alongside increased social and political instability. 

President Ramaphosa should have announced an end to lockdown tonight. A responsible government could even have announced scientific criteria for when government might consider reinstating a state of disaster. Instead, government chose to continue with a non-scientific, harmful, and corruption-plagued strategy originally devised for scenarios of upwards of 350 000 deaths. 

Tonight, President Ramaphosa said that “by any measure, we are still in the midst of a deadly epidemic.” This is incorrect. By the measures which his government used to justify lockdown in March (with deaths potentially as upwards of 350 000) and as reflected in the declining Covid-19 death rate, much more deadly threats present themselves. It is imperative that policy and public attention urgently shift its focus away from Covid-19 – which has caused around 15 000 deaths se far – to the causes of the other 450 000 to 600 000 annual deaths typically seen in South Africa. 

The harm to lives and livelihoods by the extension of lockdown - including restrictions on gatherings, commerce, tourism, sport, international travel, and more – and by mobilising all public resources against one cause of death instead of in a balanced fashion, now far outweigh the risks of Covid-19. 

Shifting goalpoasts

In March, relying on fatality assumptions that overestimated possible deaths with between 1 000% and 2 000%, government announced a lockdown. The argument was that the health system required time to prepare for the stress that would be put on it. President Ramaphosa’s argument was explicitly not that the virus could be stopped from spreading, but that lockdown would “flatten the curve”. 

Then, in subsequent weeks and months, lockdown was extended again and again, and even intensified in irrational, unconstitutional, and needlessly harmful ways, despite stress on health facilities remaining far below projections throughout. 

Now, President Ramaphosa’s government is keeping the country in lockdown long past anything to do with flattening the curve. In fact, deaths are still far below even the most optimistic scenarios originally used to justify lockdown and the state of disaster. 

Business for Ending Lockdown campaign 

Lockdown has become a far greater health and economic risk than Covid-19. Together with the Business for Ending Lockdown campaign, Sakeliga insists that Government should end lockdown, lift the state of disaster, and convert all regulations into voluntary recommendations.

Issued by Piet le Roux, CEO, Sakeliga, 17 September 2020