A bitter pill from a good doctor, plus 5 highlights from 'Vrye Weekblad'

It was a bitter, bitter pill that was given to SA: two more weeks of lockdown. But there is hardly a better doctor to give the dose than President Cyril Ramaphosa.

His speech was the right combination of praise, inspiration, vision and warning.

But it remains to be seen whether the state will be able to put his strategies into practice.

Ramaphosa has an excellent team of scientist advising him and a private sector which has really supported government in its fight against Covid-19. His other advantages are his ability to really listen, consult and unite.

His advisers most likely told him that we need a month or two, maybe even three, of general lockdown to get corona completely under control and to prevent deaths.

The Chinese city of Wuhan was in lockdown for a whole 76 days, after all.

But economists and business would have told him that this would so fundamentally ruin the economy that we would become a second Venezuela and would take many years to recover.

In this week's edition of Afrikaans digital weekly Vrye Weekblad we look at Ramaphosa's plan, and the effect of the virus on our politics and our lives.

We'll know more next week, when details of the lockdown extension will be announced, but the only way forward for Ramaphosa and his Covid-19 team is to make room in the emergency measures to allow minimum economic activity to continue.

He said: “We will use the coming days to evaluate how we will embark on risk-adjusted measures that can enable a phased recovery of the economy, allowing the return to operation of certain sectors under strictly controlled conditions.” 

The problem he and his team face, is the lack of data they have to work with. We don't know how many people have the virus and it doesn't look like we will soon be able to roll out mass testing to enable us to create reliable models.

But trace, test, track and treat is the motto.

Ramaphosa and his team know this is a matter of survival. But he remains positive: “We shall recover. We shall overcome.”

Read the full article in this week's Vrye Weekblad

Must-read articles in this week's Vrye Weekblad

>> Browse the full April 10 edition

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