Sam Nape writes:

Destitute and disillusioned families are now finding ground to assess the tough results of 2020.

Licking their onslaught bypassed January to March, these were compounded by the state of emergency and the vicious Covid-19 precautionary lockdown measures of April. Their financial traumas, nothing to be proud of when 2020 unashamedly ushered more scurry months the next 12 months and beyond.

One of our gold mine industrial areas, Ferrobank, is now the Langenhoven “Spookhuis”. An environmental orgy that includes Highveld Sorghum Beer, S.A Brewery and Highveld Coca-Cola Bottling who were the major job creators in eMalahleni. Surviving companies whose presence there classifies them as a lonely oasis in the desert restricted to short term investments.

A total collapse of infrastructure, electrical mini substations, road pitfalls, not a good hideout for thieves or the homeless accept rooming “spooks” during the day and night time. This is all before the economic devastation of Covid-19

Derelict ablution blocks signalled by dry broken pillars which were entrants and exits of family financial supporters are a sore reminder of the then economic boom in eMalahleni.

Domestically Covid-19 has now fuelled the demise of our economic machinery and left us with crumps to forge for our survival. Educational costs, municipal bills, property commitments, household bills, medical covers, job securities or transport covers, the list goes on. All these will need new budgets to see the year through.

Former buzzing entities will see their doors permanently closing down as if remotely controlled. Workers will subtract their job opportunity hours on a daily base until permanently retrenched. A collapse of one company will forcefully close the other company because of aligned products and operations, causing a ripple reaction.

The turn-around strategy, if ever we dream about it or the economy bounces back, must now come from the eMalahleni Municipality through its Local Economic Development (LED) or organised business through industry chambers, provincial economic growth agencies to revive these multibillion-rand investments which created more than 30 000 jobs for the local inhabitants. Our Highveld Steel mill will remain a sore reminder by a white elephant and statue of our giant leap and demise to an industrial portfolio.

However, retail in our CBD which was booming and flourishing through the have-nots will scavenge business like hyenas. Previously growth was phenomenal, aggressive and with very little fear of competition or threats from bigger national retailers, unlike black business which saw itself as outcasts and defenceless.

Coal mines are now digging at the back of our houses with fewer restrictions to health and compromised environmental impacts. Lack of community involvement, participation and challenges to law-breaking, will disadvantage human rights to human settlement. Nonetheless, jobs will not be created albeit for short periods.

Let it not to be the survival of the fittest but revamping the whole community to rebuild our collapsed economy. Let it not be a short term rebuilding of eMalahleni in a myopic structural plan like the poorly fenced King George Park which remains an insult to the eMalahleni community.

There is not a single economy that will survive this devastating crutch of Covid-19. The former rich will sing from the same hymn book of the poor and disadvantaged. It is only the harmony to the song that will unite the poor and the rich for a better future.

However, it is not doom and gloom. Japan had the Tsunami on 3 November 2011 but is still ready for the 2020 World Olympics. The Hiroshima H-bomb of 6 August 1945 did not collapse Tokyo. The Vietnam War of 1954 did not permanently cripple Vietnam. They all survived. It is how eMalahleni will recover from this Covid-19 collapse and ready itself for the Fourth Revolution.

Nonetheless, Covid-19 economic pandemic is not as distressful as the corruption pandemic in our municipalities.