A Level 3 Solution to a Level 6 Problem
Sometimes you need balance and other times you need to commit more wholly to a solution. When you need the latter, balance isn’t exactly going to do the trick.
A South African Police Service (SAPS) officer gestures towards his watch while asking a pedestrian why he is not home before the new curfew time, to help curb the spread of Covid-19, in Johannesburg on December 29, 2020. (Photo by Wikus de Wet / AFP)
As the pandemic draws on, one may be forgiven for starting to believe the President is attempting to usurp Jeremy Clarkson. At first, upon taking office, there was a sense of “how hard can it be?”, but when lockdown was announced, you would be forgiven for thinking he was screaming “POWWEEERRRRR” just prior to the announcement.
That was all good and well in the beginning when we believed there was reason informing these decisions but the more Jeremy this becomes, the more we’ll learn that most of this is in vein unless more is done.
True to form, there’s a sense of “let’s not get bogged down by…” what happened to that 500 billion, delayed/no UIF payouts, that cigarettes were banned on the strength of reasoning that was most useful as a Max Hurrel sample or that seemingly in the time that we were under hard lockdown, little preparation was done.
Okay, maybe that’s not fair. Further to the ways of Clarkson, there was some time spent in a top secret Eastern Cape test lab where through a ridiculous challenge on how to spend the most money on creating a useless ambulance. The winners appeared to solder some wheels to a bed and tied that to a motorbike.
Unfortunately, while it makes for hilarious content on entertainment programs, it isn’t exactly the kind of stuff you want to hear about in the news. Yeah we’re in unprecedented territory but even so you can do things to improve your odds. This is why when the three clowns creating content try cross Botswana in little two wheel drive cars, the people doing the actual business of filming and producing are in sturdy 4x4s.
Through poor leadership fatigue, I’ve come to expect most of this anyway so sadly it’s not really a surprise but it’s what comes next that scares me. When it breaks down in the middle of the night and they have to patch it together just to reach the finish line.
I don’t mind being scolded for going out drinking. Heck, I don’t even mind being scolded time and time again as we have been. I just don’t think that scolding me is going to do the trick when your friends are getting away with stealing my money. I don’t mind my liquor being taken. Heck, I don’t even mind having my hubbly taken from me too if there’s reason for it.
I just don’t think preventing me from sinning is going to do the trick while you allow others to do it illegally with no consequences. Last week, I wrote about how you need to cultivate a culture of buying in to your solution when you lack the resources to police your plan strictly and it’s about to show.
I don’t even mind being told not to party but if you’re not going to take significant action against the organisers of Rage and expect me to stay away from my local pub, I’m going to swear at you…and if you expect my local pub to close trade during a pretty profitable time but offer no support.
Good luck to you.
Despite stricter lockdown restrictions, South Africa can nearly claim more COVID related deaths than Australia has ever had infections. Perhaps the comparison is unfounded but it does speak to the effect of our lockdown strategy.
This balancing act may seem like a good political way forward but in all seriousness, practically, it just seems like a waste when it’s all uncoordinated. Of course, we don’t want more deaths and surely we want to stop the spread but you have to work with what you got and what we got is a populous that does it they wants even when you tell them not to so you have to do more to manipulate behaviour.
Just ask the illegal cigarette traders and pineapple distributers.
There’s so much more to managing a pandemic than putting out rules and my sympathies go out to our leadership. I can totally understand why the President came close to tears during the announcement. He’s between many rocks and hard places and has seemingly little support from his team. It must be tedious, especially because this is real life and not a car show.
The most frightening difference between the two though is that at the end of the car show, they get to dump their cars and go home. At the end of this pandemic, we have to live with what’s left.
Richard Anthony Chemaly -entertainment attorney, radio broadcaster and lecturer of communication ethics.
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