You can’t buy flip-flops in-store, but you can online; and you can only buy a T-shirt if it’s going to be worn under other clothes. If you weren’t aware that our government has lost the plot with its convoluted attempts at stopping Covid-19, the latest round of absurdities in the lockdown regulations should make it obvious.
Our economy desperately needs some coherent and practical solutions. That our government has time to fiddle with such madness as what clothes you can buy, and what time of day to exercise, shows it’s not focused on what really matters.
I’ve spent the past few weeks having to tell other journalists that trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel is not from the SACP. His background is the labour unions.
I’ve never met the minister in charge of a large slice of our economy, and this may be the first time I have written about him. Though his thinking is clearly stuck in the 1950s when the world’s economy was infinitely slower and less globalised, I’m told that, unlike many of his cabinet colleagues, he is not captured and genuinely cares about jobs. If he does, it’s hard to tell from the coronavirus regulations.
When I read his opinion piece in the Sunday Times about the government’s strategy, I was disappointed that it consisted only of the usual platitudes about social distancing and wearing a mask. There wasn’t anything that was about economic policy. Where was the actual strategy?
Ministers involved in resurrecting our economy are more concerned about rule book trivia
I imagine the reason so many people think Patel is a communist is that we associate such inscrutable, contradictory and capricious policy with the long-defunct Soviet Union.
Covid-19 was brought to us by the same type of system — in which functionaries are too scared to give the bosses bad news — that gave the world Chernobyl. The Chinese doctor who did try to report the start of what has become one of the worst pandemics to strike the world was arrested. Stalin would be pleased.
There hasn’t been this much Kremlinology — about what SA’s lockdown regulations really mean — since we tried to work out Soviet politics based on who was standing next to Nikita Khrushchev. And there hasn’t been anything as ludicrous and incomprehensible since Paris Hilton’s short-lived food show.
What perturbs me is that the cabinet ministers responsible for resurrecting our economy are more concerned about their rule book trivia than the big picture. Like proper Soviet thought police, they’re obsessed with what citizens are not allowed to do or consume.
As with so much ANC policy, there is no internal logic. The party has been so devoid of constructive thinking about the economy, and of attempts to set policy, that Khrushchev would feel comfortable with the pace of change.
We’re not going to survive the crisis if this is the best and brightest the ANC has to offer us.
- Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff magazine
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