The severe and mounting economic consequences of South Africa’s draconian lockdown emerged with greater clarity yesterday, matched by growing pressure on the government and on President Cyril Ramaphosa, with open discord among his Cabinet peers.
As many thousands of businesses face closure and millions face losing their jobs, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni signalled a clear departure from the government’s stubborn attachment to race ideology by rejecting race-based measures for aid to businesses, and calling for the urgent opening of the economy.
Fin24 reported yesterday that the owner of airline Kulula, Comair, had gone into business rescue; the Passenger Rail Authority of SA had proposed job cuts due to its deteriorating financial position; and yet another magazine publisher, Caxton – whose titles include Food & Home, Garden & Home, and People – had announced its withdrawal from magazine publishing.
In the midst of the crisis, the government has doubled down on regulations – such as the sale of cigarettes – which are increasingly being criticized as having limited health benefits but large economic costs.
Evidently stung by suggestions that his authority had been challenged by his 2017 rival in the African National Congress (ANC) leadership race, and Jacob Zuma ally, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa said yesterday: ‘No one is trying to pursue any interests. The only interests we are pursuing is the health of our people, finish and klaar.’
But the ban – which is being challenged in the courts – reflects an aspect of South Africa’s lockdown captured in the international news agency Bloomberg headline yesterday: ‘Government is treating South Africans like “naughty children”’.
The report warned that, having won praise at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, President Ramaphosa was ‘risking a public backlash after members of his cabinet reversed some of his measures and made racially charged statements’.
The cigarette debacle has become the focus of renewed attacks on the ANC and Ramaphosa himself by the official opposition Democratic Alliance, with the party’s shadow cabinet taking off the gloves. Leon Schreiber (public service) said: ‘In desperately trying to deny that he bent the knee before Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa now says that he prematurely and misleadingly announced the unbanning of tobacco sales based on some “draft framework”. It’s pathetic.’
Said Phumzile van Damme (communications): ‘I hope this goes to court. It’s time we heard from the judiciary about the arbitrariness of some of the regulations… Bravo British American Tobacco for standing your ground. It is healthy for our democracy for matters to be ventilated in court.’
And Dean Macpherson (trade) said: ‘It’s been 10 full days since the President last addressed the nation. Ministers have contradicted him, others have dismissed the economic fallout of the global health crisis and some have even threatened that we will go back to Level 5. What are his views? It’s difficult to tell if he can’t talk to us.’
The public mood has been captured in an open letter to Ramaphosa by broadcaster Gareth Cliff who said that when Dlamini-Zuma announced the about-turn on the cigarette ban, ‘many of us (even the non-smokers) were ready to give her the middle finger – and start risking breaking the rules’.
Cliff told Ramaphosa: ‘Your hold on power depends on people willing to comply with the rules – the same rules they expect you to comply with. Our patience grows thin, and in tandem your tax collection runs dry. When you speak of a social compact, it goes both ways. You have to take your boot off our throats.’
In another extraordinary development, visibly discomforted news anchors Xoli Mngambi and Jane Dutton were made to apologise for comments made during an eNCA news broadcast that implied Dlamini-Zuma had undermined Ramaphosa’s authority when reinstating the ban on cigarettes.
Both pointedly wove into the apology they were evidently compelled to make an assertion of their right and the right of their audience to free speech.
This followed calls to boycott the channel from the ANC Youth League ‘national task team’, which likened the channel to a ‘Nazi-inspired propagandist channel’.
Finance Minister Mboweni drew fire from the ANC Women’s League this week for saying he was in favour of ditching the ban on cigarettes and alcohol.
For a second time in a week, Mboweni broke ranks yesterday in rejecting race-based measures in disbursing aid to businesses in crisis.
‘I think that we need to support all enterprises, black and white, as long as they are able to remain viable to support our people, create jobs,’ he said.
Mboweni described during a virtual meeting of parliament’s finance committees having had a discussion with a white hotel owner whose business was successful in good times and whose employees were 95% black, but which had been forced to closed because of Covid-19. The owner told Mboweni that he could not get money from the government because he was white.
Trade union Solidarity is approaching the Constitutional Court to appeal a high court ruling allowing the tourism department to use B-BBEE as a consideration when dishing out R200m in state relief funding.
The union has also laid a charge of perjury against small business development minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni for allegedly contradicting herself over her department’s decision to use B-BBEE as a criterion to help distressed companies affected by the coronavirus.
So far, 148 South Africans have died from Covid-19, with positive cases rising yesterday by 352, to 7 572.