At midnight on Monday, South Africans entered a new world of freedom – after 145 days of ostensibly not being allowed to buy cigarettes, travel between provinces and drink alcohol (albeit since July 12). The strangest thing doesn’t appear to have been the mass absenteeism from work, endless queues and near pandemonium in bottle stores of yore.
Category Archives: Columns
Lockdown has all of us on our knees
A picture tells 1 000 words and the stories at the weekend were bad: the controversial former minister of communications Faith Muthambi and her gaffe prone successor Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams separately doling out relief to recipients who are on their knees – literally.
The fine art of showing solidarity
The lockdown has stress-tested all of us, in every possible way, but for small and medium business owners it’s been especially tough. For those in the tourism and hospitality business it’s been nothing short of catastrophic.
Covid-19 lockdown: SA is slaying it as a country of paradoxes
The age-old philosophical conundrum of whether a tree makes a sound when it falls in the forest if there’s no one there to hear it took on a new meaning on Sunday. Uncle Cyril took to our TV screens to issue a stern uitkak for all those that think they’re COVID-19 proof and have been partying like it’s March 14 2020.
‘Keep the canary alive in the coal mine’
It was brutal this week. Our economy, already suffering a nauseating number of unemployed, seems to be developing the same horrible momentum of the COVID 19 infection rate. The difference is most of us will get through the pandemic, not all of us will survive the economic contagion.
Sho’t Left solution for hard-pressed national Treasury
The taxi industry flexed its muscles on Monday and Gauteng, the country’s economic heartland, immediately took the hit. People arrived late for work – whether they were on board taxis or stuck behind them. Some didn’t even make it.
If ‘All Lives Mattered’ we wouldn’t need a movement
All Lives Matter. The people who bang this drum are invariably the same who will fight to the last breath, when you declare All Men Are Trash. The truth is All Lives Don’t Matter because if they did, we wouldn’t have to have a movement declaring that Black Lives Matter.
Prohibition fever is enough to drive one to drink
The Transport Department believes that alcohol is turning South Africa into a banana republic. That’s what department spokesperson Collen Msibi told the media this week, explaining the department’s bid to eliminate drunken driving through the National Road Traffic Amendment Act, reducing the allowed amount of alcohol in a driver’s bloodstream to almost nil.
Schabir Shaik has showed the world that playing golf can be fairway to health
What a time to be alive! Virtual signalling on social media reached fever pitch this week: black squares signalling #BlackLivesMatter abounding; many by South Africans apparently deliriously new to the movement, but still resolutely mute to the realities beyond their own front door.
Evil is malevolent violence but ‘Donker Jonker’ may disagree
Not even the South African Satanic Church, registered mere weeks before the lockdown, will dare to hold its first public service. Just exactly how they will eventually physically celebrate their beliefs and with what rituals and texts is still highly unknown – to protect the identities of its adherents, who might otherwise be victimised in polite South African society.
Kevin Ritchie 