The government’s first limited daily exercise slot from 6am to 9am had some of South Africa’s favourite outdoor spots crammed with runners, walkers and cyclists, and shopping malls filled with shoppers, but workers of the world marked May Day in a mood of gloom over devastating job losses.
Positive cases rose to 5 951 and 13 more died, bringing the total to 116. The health department said 2 382 people had recovered so far.
For the hale, the first day of the level 4 lockdown was a welcome opportunity to exercise, briefly, outdoors, and go shopping. Both activities drew attention to non-sensical aspects of the government’s lockdown rules: allowing people to exercise for only three hours in the morning from 6am meant popular spots became dangerously crowded, and, in the shops, you could buy lipstick, but not braai grids, jerseys but not flip-flops.
Pressure is also mounting on the government to lift its peremptory reinstatement of the ban on selling cigarettes, having announced a week ago that cigarettes would be on sale from 1 May.
Global tobacco giant British American Tobacco South Africa has demanded the ban be lifed by Monday or it will go to court.
The Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association also indicated that it would launch an urgent application over the cigarette ban.
Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced that buses, e-hailing services, delivery vehicles and taxis could operate between 5am and 7pm, but that passengers must be limited, and must wear masks.
For workers in South Africa and around the world, May Day – or Workers’ Day, as it is known here – passed without the usual rallies and marches that have marked the labour movement’s annual celebration of worker rights for the past 130 years.
Though the day was celebrated by a virtual international coming together, the mood was grim in the face of devastating job losses.
Veteran labour writer Terry Bell that ‘workers and their unions, still reeling from job losses even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, face an even bleaker future. With airlines, major retail outlets, restaurants and other businesses in dire straits, many more jobs have been lost and even more are threatened’.
‘Latest estimates, given the damage already done to the South African economy, are that up to 1 million more workers may be unemployed before year end. Treasury has sketched a bleak worst-case scenario in which the coronavirus sees South Africa losing a total of some 7 million jobs, bringing unemployment levels to over 50%.’
In other virus-related news
- The US Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval for the drug remdesivir to be used as a coronavirus treatment, US President Donald Trump announced. Trump said the company, Gilead, which had developed the drug, would donate 1.5 million vials of remdesivir. Distribution of the drug to hospitals would begin on Monday. The drug, which was originally developed as a treatment for Ebola, cut the duration of coronavirus symptoms from 15 to 11 days in one US trial involving hospitals around the world; and
- Johns Hopkins University says more than 1 million people known to have had the virus globally have recovered.