by Kate Alexander
South Africa’s government moved quickly in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The first confirmed case was on 5 March 2020; a State of National Disaster was promulgated on 15 March, with this accompanied by closure of schools; a full lockdown was implemented from 26 March and the first death was announced the following day. Lockdown was draconian. Travel was prohibited except for essential services; only food shops, pharmacies and medical facilities were permitted to open (even the sale of cigarettes was illegal); and a curfew was enforced. From 1 May there was a slight easing of restrictions, with more industries and shops allowed to open; and there were further relaxation in most areas from 1 June. The number of confirmed cases is higher than elsewhere in Africa with 570,000 cases and 11,500 deaths recorded in mid-August. In our survey, 84.3% of adults felt the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was doing a good job or a very good job.
However, this is only one side of the story. South Africa has a higher level of income inequality than any other major country; and nearly 40% of the labour-force was unemployed even before the crisis. The implications of this inequality were apparent from the outset. For instance, when the wealthy Oppenheimer family donated R1 billion (about $55 million), leaving them a mere R134 billion approximately, this was widely commended, but when vast numbers of workers lost their jobs or were banned from informal trading, leaving them with next to nothing, this was barely noticed by mainstream media. Dividing the population between those on lower incomes (defined as less than R10,000 per month, about $550), who represented about 83% of adults, those on middle incomes (R10,000 to R40,000 per month), about 13% of adults, and those on higher incomes (above R40,000), about 4%, we found that 89% of those on lower incomes had difficulty paying their bills, compared to 27% on middle incomes and 13% on higher incomes. Differences were reflected, in particular, in responses to a question about the adverse impact of the crisis on your child’s education. Here 82% of those on lower incomes, 53% of those on middle incomes and 13% on upper incomes were ‘very concerned’. This contrast reflected, in particular, capacity to cope with on-line teaching. Hardly surprising, then, that when asked about personal happiness, only 11% of those on lower incomes were positive, compared with 26% of middle-income earners and 39% of those in the upper-income group.
The government’s response to suffering among poorer people has been lackluster, inadequate and shambolic, notably in relation to food distribution. At the best of times, millions of people in South Africa suffer malnutrition, but starvation is minimized through delivery of hundreds-of-thousands of food parcels and school feeding schemes. Yet during lockdown there was a sudden burst in unemployment, with at least 3 million losing their jobs (many without any benefits or savings) and schools were closed, so there was a surge in the number of people without food. In truth, the government did not know the magnitude of the problem, and its food banks and supply systems were under-resourced and unprepared. Municipal councilors, mostly members of the governing African National Congress (ANC), were entrusted with distribution and frequently abused their power, delivering only to their supporters with the aim of winning votes ahead of next year’s local government elections. Pushed along by riots, telephone hotlines were established, but were quickly swamped by calls. Food queues sometimes extended more than a kilometer, and there were stampedes. The government attempted to work with NGOs but doing so through cumbersome procedures that slowed relief efforts. The food problem remains acute.
The crisis has revealed the government working against, rather than with, civil society. In many places this builds on years of distrust. There has been anger, in particular, over failure to deliver basic services and, more broadly, to dismantle structural injustice inherited from apartheid. How has civil society responded to the challenges of the pandemic and lockdown?
Civil society’s response
Trade unions were at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid, which culminated in the 1994 election, and they played a powerful role in improving workers’ conditions in the years that followed. But tensions emerged. The leadership of the largest federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), backed the government, which many workers regarded as favouring business interests. Matters came to a head after the Marikana Massacre in 2012, when the police shot and killed 34 striking mineworkers employed by Lonmin (whose largest shareholder was Ramaphosa, already a senior leader in the ANC). The federation’s largest union, the National Union of Metalworkers, broke away and established the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU).
Links for more