Soften the lockdown so people can get food

Cooked meal sales are a hot topic but Covid-19 lockdown has brought a deeper food crisis. Hunger stalks the land. Food riots, starting with the looting of shops and trucks, will accelerate unless fairer, more efficient systems are applied.

Official feeding programmes at national, provincial and local level are disorganised, riddled with corruption, selfies and political bias.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his weekly letter: “We have been confronted with distressing images of desperate people clamouring for food parcels at distribution centres and of community protests against food shortages.

“We have also had to contend with allegations both disturbing and disgusting. A number of provinces have received reports that callous individuals, some of them allegedly government officials, are hoarding or selling food parcels earmarked for the needy and destitute, or diverting them to their friends and families. If there is found to be substance to these allegations we will deal with the individuals concerned harshly”.

He didn’t mention party political bias. City Press alleges incidents of food looting in eight provinces. People in charge of distribution – “mostly ANC councillors” – are not giving food to needy families. Culprits are helping themselves and their supporters.

It’s a replay of the ANC folk plundering millions allocated to the 2013 funeral of Nelson Mandela. Procurement procedures are again being breached in a connected-elite feeding frenzy.

If it were not for private sector generosity, we’d be closer to a Hunger Games dystopia.

In Joburg, provincial and municipal schemes are not reaching intended targets. Red tape excludes many, including foreign nationals, who are begging in unprecedented numbers at intersections. They are all human, dammit.

The inability of city and provincial officials to arrange accommodation for most of Johannesburg’s homeless has touched generous people, who sponsor, collect and deliver food. Curmudgeons point out that encourages the homeless to remain homeless, relying on kind-hearted souls. What’s the alternative, let them starve?

Whatever the merits of a prolonged hard lockdown, the government does not have a grip on the economic consequences. Control freaks relish inflicting tough conditions, banning sales of tobacco, liquor or hot food. Never mind the losses of jobs and tax revenue in a junk-rated economy.

Not one expert – not one – knows with certainty that all this sacrifice is necessary. Lockdowns across the world are based on mathematical models, where the values of variables are continually being adjusted. This was explained by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in a Washington Post column, “Why the coronavirus models aren’t totally accurate” (10 April).

Estimates of death tolls have been revised downward. Between 27 March and 8 April, the University of Washington produced more than five downward revisions of the projected US death toll.

Figures never speak for themselves. They are interpreted. Unwavering faith in an ever-tightening lockdown is not academically, economically or morally sustainable.

Let’s support the medical doctors who have asked Ramaphosa to end the hard lockdown.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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