Unfunny Comedy

If people weren't dying, the comedic quality of South Africa's degenerating handling of the coronavirus might be considered amusing, but sadly there is an all too real human cost to this fiasco that keeps it from being even slightly amusing.

South Africa has a history of weak leadership, but the current crop are really showing themselves to be in a different class to those who have gone before them. The president appears to go AWOL during a pandemic, addressing the nation once a month if we're lucky, meanwhile his lackeys make up random, bizarre and inconsistent regulations¹ governing the nation's lockdown that have left the economy on its knees and the people scratching their heads.

One of the latest bits of nonsense is the allowing of taxis to run at 100% capacity before the beaches, parks and nature reserves are allowed to open. Bonkers!  But according to the Health Minister this is perfectly OK because the risk of transmission of the coronavirus in a taxi is mitigated by the windows of the vehicle being open. Yeah right!  We're trusting the notoriously criminal misbehaving taxis to operate within the new lockdown regulations when they can't even abide by the simplest of rules in the Highway Code?!?

Anyone who rides in a taxi regularly (or has seen a taxi in operation) knows that they've been running at 100% capacity for a while now, with no enforcing of the wearing of face masks or sanitising hands, and yet the govt think they can trust these jokers to mitigate any transmission risks by keeping the windows slightly open. In winter? Really?!?

The current epicentre of SA's coronavirus  is Gauteng Province which just happens to be where we find Soweto, SA's largest township. And guess what? Soweto is the epicentre of Gauteng's epidemic². And yet, the govt still sees fit to allow the main form of public transport operating within the community to operate at 100% capacity as long as the windows are open.  Do they not see a correlation between the taxis running at 100% capacity and the spread of the virus in the townships?!?  Or do they just not care?

Quite where this goes next is anyone's guess... though it's doubtful things will improve anytime soon.


¹finally after four months of lockdown and several court cases, the govt has agreed to set up a technical committee to help ensure that Covid-19 measures adopted are consistent with human rights of SA's citizens

²just as Khayelitsha is the epicentre of Cape Town's epidemic.