On Thursday evening President Ramaphosa addressed a country weary of the coronavirus, but also weary of the unending stories of economic hardship this pandemic has brought with it.
In the midst of the pandemic, Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams deemed fit to lunch with friends. Incidentally, one of those friends was Mduduzi Manana, a former ANC MP who had resigned in 2018 following allegations of assault. Ndabeni-Abrahams was suspended for 2 months and is now back in her position.
We live in a country where the rules do not matter if, like the taxi industry, you can bring the country to its knees with strike action - or as the phrase goes, ‘make the country ungovernable’. Ramaphosa’s announcement came during the same week that restaurateurs staged the #Jobssavelives protests across the country. Restaurants are bleeding jobs as the alcohol ban and curfew take their toll. The evidence makes it clear that reinstating the alcohol ban has ensured that trauma units across the country are not overwhelmed with alcohol-related incidents. This has removed the extra burden on health services dealing with COVID-19 cases.
As Ramaphosa rightly said last week, “But what concerns me, and what concerns all South Africans, are those instances where funds are stolen, where they are misused, where goods are overpriced, where food parcels are diverted from needy households – where there is corruption and mismanagement of public funds.”