Business for Ending Lockdown is deeply concerned about health minister Zweli Mkhize’s recent warnings that South Africa could face harsher lockdown restrictions should Covid infections and deaths rise.  

The lockdown has had and continues to have, devastating effects on the lives and livelihoods of millions of South Africans. Current travel restrictions remain so onerous as to be mostly prohibitive, causing severe damage to the tourism and hospitality industries. Many other sectors are yet to get back to anywhere near normal levels of trading activity. Stricter restrictions would draw slowly-healing sectors back into financial turmoil and forced retrenchments. 

PANDA, a multidisciplinary research team and member of B4EL, has shown that lockdowns are not only ineffective, but do more harm than good and lead to worse health outcomes due to the effects of poverty and under-hospitalisation for non-Covid conditions when movement is significantly curtailed. Unfortunately, much of the government’s thinking is being informed by inappropriate international policy, especially in Europe, where several countries or regions are instituting ‘second lockdowns’ to contain the spread of SARS-Cov2. However, Nick Hudson and Ian McGorian from PANDA note that the perceived ‘second wave’ in Europe is largely a ‘casedemic’ – a proliferation of confirmed cases due to much more testing. Where official Covid deaths are rising, they are generally only a fraction of the wave of deaths that occurred from March to May and can largely be explained by seasonal factors as Europe gets deeper into winter. 

Covid deaths in South Africa peaked in July and have been falling since. More confirmed cases from more testing have not led to more daily deaths, and as the weather warms into summer, this promising trend is likely to continue. According to PANDA researchers, the Western Cape data shows that there is no resurgence in the townships where high levels of community immunity exist, while a lockdown now might merely postpone community immunity for areas where it has not yet been achieved, and cause significant economic stress for the poor. 

Moreover, B4EL is alarmed that another lockdown is being considered after extreme government incompetence and mismanagement during the first hard lockdown. Business Day reports that the Hawks are now investigating tens of thousands of Covid-linked payments. The government has a well-proven track record of irrational, harmful regulations. 

There is no good reason for ramping up lockdown restrictions. Such measures do more harm than good, increase destructive and corrupt state actions, and leave businesses floundering in a sea of uncertainty and loss of revenue. B4EL calls on the health minister to act responsibly to avoid another humanitarian disaster. The minister should recommend to the president to end all lockdown restrictions immediately, lift the state of disaster, and allow people and organisations to manage their unique risks by converting all Covid-19 regulations into non-compulsory recommendations.