JOHN DLUDLU: Winter of discontent looms if needs of the poor are not met
The government needs to tackle poverty and corruption as they have the potential of undermining efforts to contain spread of the virus
As SA approaches the end point of the extended Covid-19 lockdown there really should be only two important questions on the agenda of policymakers: first, how to assist millions of poor, starving people from taking their desperation into the streets; and second, how to weed out the beautiful bureaucracy erected around much-needed economic support measures to stop the economy from collapsing.
Both questions — and their answers — have a direct bearing on two interconnected sets of issues, namely saving lives by containing the spread of the coronavirus on the one hand, and saving livelihoods on the other. Put differently, poverty has the real potential of undermining efforts such as social distancing and mass testing to contain the virus’s spread, and the slow flow — if at all — of financial and nonfinancial support measures to businesses could scuttle efforts to reopen the economy...
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