SA low on happiness as fear and uncertainty spike amid Covid-19

Happiness among South Africans has dropped to lows comparable only to September 2019, when xenophobia swept through the country,, according to the Gross National Happiness index.

The Twitter-based index saw a significant decrease in positive feelings after President Cyril Ramaphosa declared Covid-19 a national disaster on Sunday.

Ramaphosa implemented bans and restrictions regarding schools, universities, prisons, visas, travel and group gatherings.

These are the findings of Prof Talita Greyling, from the University of Johannesburg, and Dr Stephanie Rossouw, from the Auckland University of Technology. In collaboration with Afstereo, they launched SA’s happiness index in April 2019.

“The significant decrease in the index in the wake of Covid-19 and the strong emotion of fear measured from tweets are an indication South Africans are taking the pandemic seriously.

“We trust that if South Africans are disciplined and follow the announced measures to curb Covid-19, it is possible to turn around the outbreak in the country,” said Greyling and Rossouw.

They said the third-highest emotion is uncertainty about the future.

In their analysis, they differentiate between eight emotions  which are captured in the text of tweets, namely joy, anticipation (uncertainty), trust, disgust, anger, surprise, fear and sadness.

“The strongest emotion measured, related to Covid-19, is fear at 18.37%, which is realistic considering the threat the virus holds, not only to people’s health but also to their economic position  as markets plunge and retrenchments are announced.

“Interesting to see the next-highest measured emotion is trust. The tweets reflect people trust the situation to improve over time. These tweets have a strong religious undertone  and furthermore it seems people trust or distrust the actions government has put into place to curb the pandemic,” Greyling and Rossouw said.