MEDIA STATEMENT
24 March 2020
Covid-19 Crisis in the Republic of South Africa
The Inyanda National Land Movement supports the announcement by our President Cyril Ramaphosa, in calling for a 21 day lockdown of South Africa starting at mid-night on Thursday 26th, March 2020. We supported it because we think that this may be able to, some extent, protect the health of South Africans.
At time of crises, we recognise the need and value of solidarity from all quarters and that all contributions are important.
However we must also remind ourselves why our public health system is so weak and, together with public health workers, will be placed under immense stress. In 1994 we inherited a public health system that did not function to serve the majority of the population. Since then neo-liberal policies and opposition from entrenched interests have continued to ensure that the poor remain on the margins of adequate and safe public health provision in SA even in times when there are not “crises”. With the spread of the corona virus the suffering and threat to the lives of millions of South Africans is immense. And this is not the case in SA only – globally neo-liberal policies have prevented the emergence of pubic health systems and even weakened those in countries where they t had previously been of relatively high standards.
We think that the measures already announced by our President do not go far enough to address the concerns and immediate needs of the working class – the impoverished, the underemployed, the unemployed and many vulnerable workers. We know that many school going children depend on feeding schemes to get at least one meal a day, we know of the thousands of homeless people who have no roof over their heads, of the millions living in overcrowded townships, of the millions who never know where the next meal is coming from unless they get some work on any given day, of the millions with HIV/AIDs and TB. . The elderly, one of the most vulnerable groups, will have different chances of survival – if they are poor or rich leaving in leafy suburbs. What measures are being put in place to ensure protection of the health of farm workers (and their families) who will have to continue to work to ensure “no disruptions to the food chain”?
Further measures are needed to ensure to minimise the immediate health and economic risks faced by of the impoverished. It is also time to start problematising and analysing how and what got us into this situation – unbridled capitalist accumulation and high levels of consumption and extreme inequality, our dependency and consumption of fossil fuels, industrial agriculture and the destruction of biodiversity and our natural environment. How and what will we do differently so that when this “crisis” is over we will construct a different society.
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