ED’S LETTER
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LOCKDOWN Issue 2020
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guard down and dismiss it as the “shambling zombie” in the distance as Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described it, then it will strike. We have to stay the course, and we know we walk a terrifying tightrope keeping the economy grinding and the population safe. Around the world, this demands public-private partnerships, the likes of which most of us have never seen. It calls for a government of national unity in South Africa. Neither the government, private sector nor civil society has a monopoly on the expertise to deal with this alone. They need to come together and share resources and wisdom. We need to combine capabilities to model, test, trace and contain surges in the pandemic. The world changed in a matter of weeks and our new narrative is survival. It’s not always
ives versus livelihoods. Is it an either-or choice and if so, who gets to make it; you or your government? The human race is reeling in a world so surreal it beggars belief. In democracies, citizens have had to surrender many of their civil liberties on the altar of safety. How much of your freedom do you have to relinquish to live? Some might call this hyperbolic, but CNN’s Richard Quest described it as a Faustian pact. In this hazy space, trust becomes critically important. In South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa’s initial public response to Covid-19 was downright presidential, but as days turned to weeks people have increasingly questioned the authoritarian edicts of his government. Many of its rulings, that impact
Lives versus LIVELIHOODS
on our ability to earn a living and determine when we can move around and what we can buy, are arbitrary and bizarre. Some people are ennobled by a crisis and display true leadership, while others strut around like the little tin pot despots they are – and we’ve seen inglorious examples of this. Everyone should always behave with compassion and integrity. Alas, they don’t always, but now more so than ever, we have to behave mindfully. Predictions are that South Africa’s GDP will contract between 10-17% and a global recession seems inevitable. If governments want a meaningful social compact with citizens they need to be utterly transparent in all dealings. They have to share information and explain decision-making. They need to subject their choices to scrutiny. Rational adults have the right to robustly interrogate matters of life and death. This week Ramaphosa’s address, while belated and vague,
made refreshing concessions around government missteps. Hopefully, his ideologically bent and authoritarian ministers will take heed. Just as masking and social distancing have become the norm, and words like co-morbidity and digital detox have entered our lexicon, so too have our brains started engaging around issues like modelling and epidemiology. The lockdown was meant to flatten the curve of the pandemic and hopefully has in South Africa, but in that time there is no clear evidence that the government has significantly bolstered its tracing and testing capability. It would do well not to patronise its citizenry. It cannot decide whimsically or in secret what is good for us. This is not to say that most people don’t appreciate the enormity of what we face. Covid-19 seems like a complicated and nasty beast. We would be stupid to be complacent about it. It has deadly potential to deceive: when we let our
an Armageddon movie. Many people have rightly relished the opportunity to take stock and re-align. But it has come at a cost. Major investments have been cancelled or shelved and huge unemployment and hunger loom. In this digital edition of KZN INVEST, we’ve asked clever people to try and predict how the economy will change. And, our Vega Talks, an initiative in conjunction with the university, offers businesses some fantastic ideas on how to respond to the new world. There’s a story on the critical property sector and another on a Durban telecoms company that was done before the lockdown but is interesting because the sector has never been as relevant as it is today. Good luck to us all as we hopefully start navigating what Business for Unity calls the riskadjusted restart of the economy.
gregarde@gmail.com
