The Covid-19 pandemic has gripped the world and South Africa tightly in the past two weeks, to the extent that my nightly routine has changed. For close on an hour before I go to bed each night, I wade through forwarded WhatsApp messages — videos, gifs, screenshots, memes, photos and an unhealthy number of dad-jokes.
Among the haystack are needles of brilliance, and people must be commended for their sense of humour shining through in times of great uncertainty and crisis.
Many musicians and comedians have taken to doing regular live broadcasts on social media to keep in touch with their audiences. The shutdown unquestionably has a huge impact on live performers, taking away a source of income, which can be devastating. The music industry is incredibly tough, and for many, the touring calendar is akin to any sports league — a concert, a festival, a World Cup, or dare I say, an Olympic Games.
The efforts of these performers are truly welcome and provide some much-needed respite from the ongoing and relentless coverage of the pandemic. I was hugely relieved when ‘Brexit Got Done’ just so that the 24-hour news agencies could stop milking it every second of the day. Compared to the coverage of the pandemic, I’d take Brexit back in a heartbeat.
As viruses do, this one has infected everything, including all our conversations. Covid-19 hugely impacts our lives; almost none of us have experienced anything like this before. So, it only makes sense to come across it at every turn. I’m doing it right now, aren’t I?
Two trends have struck me in the past couple of weeks. The first has been people lauding President Cyril Ramaphosa for his decisive and brave leadership in paving the way towards flattening the curve and eventually placing the country on lockdown. The second has been people thanking the heavens that Jacob Zuma is not in charge now because surely that would be much worse.
Last week, local artists such as Jeremy Loops and The Kiffness, both of whom I follow closely and have watched live on numerous occasions, shared similar sentiments about Cyril The Great on Instagram.
The thing is, with Jacob Zuma, even before he took office, we knew that he was a thug — entering the Union Buildings for the first time with 783 criminal charges linked to the Arms Deal hovering over him. Zuma cuts the figure of a mafia boss Martin Scorsese could only dream of typecasting. In contrast, the warm-smiling, promenade-running Ramaphosa is a godsend.
Except that he isn’t.
True leadership is not announcing an extraordinarily stringent shutdown of the country. Ramaphosa is really just the government’s spokesman, standing before the nation looking statesman-like while announcing the lockdown. Ramaphosa has barely left the podium when his ministers, who are in charge of implementing the lockdown, are contradicting one another and sometimes behaving like clowns.
I understand that implementing something as huge as this is going to have to be revised frequently. But, when our minister of health explains something simple, such as whether we can walk our dogs under lockdown, only for the risible minister of police to say we can’t, Ramaphosa should make sure commonsensical clarity is sought.
He’s not the ‘Great Leader’ that artists make him out to be. He is a loyal African National Congress cadre and committed socialist, inexorably marching us towards a totalitarian state by advancing reprehensible policies, which will denude South Africans of their property rights, enhance deplorable race-based employment policies and accelerate cadre deployment. Our ‘Great Leader’ shares responsibility for our disgraceful levels of corruption and irregular and wasteful expenditure, which help to spur capital flight of epic proportions, along with a devastating shortage of skills in key areas.
This has all culminated in the self-made crisis that has led to South Africa’s investment status finally being downgraded to junk by Moody’s. This will result in less government expenditure on essential services — like healthcare and education — while at the same time weakening of the rand, and pushing up prices of staple foods such as bread and mealie meal.
As footage of police brutality and the South African Defence Force (SANDF) parading through the streets beating up ordinary citizens begins to do the rounds, as news of our economy shrinking even further, and as unemployment statistics hurtle into uncharted territory, artists must bear in mind that they thanked the ‘Great Leader’ and his cabinet of cronies for bravely deciding to do something they were forced by circumstance to do. He has put an under-capacitated police force – South Africa’s least trusted government service – in charge of maintaining peace while the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people will be compromised for months if not years to come.
Ricky Gervais, in his opening speech at the Golden Globes earlier this year, roasted celebrities for their woke political grandstanding and incessant virtue signalling. Among the many ‘pearlers’ in his speech, Gervais said:
“So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”
Musicians have immense power to influence people, and with this comes great responsibility. Now more than ever we can ill afford to cut our government slack because, as history teaches us, it is in times of crisis that freedoms are forfeited, and governments take increasing control.
Artists have an amazing ability to remove us from reality. It is concerning that they seem to rather be removing themselves from reality, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Now more than ever we need to be distracted from the frightening reality, even if it is by something as light-hearted as a livestream of an Ode to Oros. If you haven’t seen ‘The Kiffness- Lockdown Rhapsody’, do yourself a favour.
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