EDITORIAL | SA is on fire and our chance to douse the blaze may have passed

When a fire breaks out at home, one of the things that happens is glass starts breaking. This occurs at anywhere between 150 and 200ºC, as the intensity of the blaze ramps up. First the glass cracks, then it shatters.

The same thing is happening in SA now. Our house is on fire and the glass is cracking. Some will argue that it’s already shattered. Some will say it broke a long time ago.

The extent of the blaze was evident this week as Cyril Ramaphosa held rare interviews with journalists. The truth is, Ramaphosa said, we have no money. He didn’t use that exact phrase, of course, instead delivering the much more diplomatic “constrained”.

The president, according to BusinessLIVE, reporting on a conversation Ramaphosa had with 702, said the government could not bail out the sectors hardest hit by current lockdown regulations — particularly the tourism, hospitality, restaurant and alcohol industries — as it did during the first lockdown.

“We do not have the money,” he said. “That’s the simple truth that has to be put out there. We are constrained from a financing point of view.”

The president continued: “The relief measures we announced last year amounted to about 10% of our GDP, which is quite big for a little economy such as ours ... and right now we are at a stage where we have to fund the vaccines, which is going to amount to a lot of money as well. We are constrained.”

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Ramaphosa said the government would find the money for vaccines.

“We are going to have the money; it will come from Treasury. There is just no way we can say, when it comes to saving the lives of South Africans, that we don’t have the money. The money will be there. It has to be there to save the lives of South Africans. That one will be my bottom line.”

Basically, said Ramaphosa, we have to choose: we help industry or we buy vaccines. We’re too broke to do both the things we should be doing.

It is a sad indictment that government is in such a position. That it came in the same week the Amathole municipality collapsed — employees there haven’t been paid for four months — highlights how set-in the rot is.

Years of looting, corruption, mismanagement, turning a blind eye and outright incompetence have come back to haunt the country, meaning we have to choose between helping Covid-hit businesses and buying vaccines.

Our house is ablaze, the windows are threatening to shatter, if they haven’t already, and fireman-in-chief Ramaphosa is promising to put out the blaze. The truth is, he might well be too late.