FRED KHUMALO: Wolves howling at the door

I know that like most South Africans, you are suffering from coronadose, an overdose of bad coronavirus-related news from consuming too much media.

It’s difficult not to talk about the scourge. The column you’re reading is supposed to be about eating out. Thanks to the curse of our times, I cannot go out and write about my culinary experiences.

Yes, two weeks ago, caught in the excitement of the relaxation of some aspects of the lockdown, I stupidly went out to my sister-in-law’s house.

At the time of going out — just like those fellow idiots who walked on the promenade in Cape Town — a part of me said it was only a family affair, after all, not a social gathering. Yet no amount of self-justification can erase the fact that it was a bad move, for which I apologise.

Which brings me to something I am struggling with right now. As a writer and public speaker, I have been hit hard in the pocket by the Covid-19 outbreak.

Several gigs I was supposed to participate in have been cancelled. Overseas engagements that were to have taken place in the second half of the year have also either been cancelled or indefinitely postponed. I can already hear the wolves howling at my door.

Like most economically active South Africans, I cannot wait for the lockdown to end. Sadly, some compatriots cannot go back to work as the companies they worked for collapsed during the lockdown.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and his administration were lauded for their handling of what, under inept leadership, could have been a disaster.

Under Ramaphosa’s leadership our country was one of the few in the world that appeared to have a planned response to the crisis.

As a writer and public speaker, the Covid-19 outbreak has hit me hard in the pocket

However, more than 50 days since the imposition of the lockdown, questions are being raised about whether there is a need to continue the lockdown when there is no scientific evidence that such a move would significantly reduce the rate of infection.

The counterargument is that those who want the lockdown to end are the shop stewards of big business concerned with the bottom line, at whatever cost.

This argument maintains that ending the lockdown now would compromise the lives of the more vulnerable members of society — the poorer people who perform menial tasks and are more likely to be in contact with people other than desk-bound white-collar workers.

These people, because of their economic standing, invariably live in more crowded conditions. Once infected, a member of this class is likely to spread the virus faster than their more affluent counterpart.

We are caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no simple trade-off between our health and our economic prosperity.

Do we want to be healthy but die of starvation? Or can we afford to be economically active, only to increase the number of Covid-related deaths?

These are the questions our business leaders have to grapple with. It is becoming clearer every day that more businesses will be opening sooner rather than later. And as they reopen, the need for the working environment to be made as safe as possible cannot be overemphasised. The same should be said for public transport.

We need our lives back. But regaining lost ground, economically speaking, should be done in a responsible and calculated manner.

Otherwise new infections will be the order of the day, and the lockdown and all the precautions we have become used to would have been in vain.