It is said of common sense that it is not as common as it should be, and how true this seems today as South Africans exhibit a lemming-like urge to rush headlong into the sea, perishing on the waves of hubris and bravado, and drowning in self-inflicted ignorance. How else does one explain the almost unbelievable scenes playing out across the country in wanton defiance of the remaining Covid lockdown rules?
In one of the most infamous cases, people blocked a tunnel on a road outside Pretoria to indulge in a roadside party whose aims seem to have been the pursuit of drunkenness and showing the middle finger to the authorities. Masks, social distancing and the ban on large gatherings were celebrated in their absence.
Look, Mom, no mask! Predictably, this violation of lockdown regulations, like many others, appears to have taken place quite unhindered by anyone in any position of authority, and how one parties on a busy road, with passing motorists taking pictures, without attracting nary a traffic cop, is beyond belief.
Typically, and in true South African style, our politicians have completed the happy circle of impunity by warning of dire consequences should anything like this happen again. ‘‘This conduct is unacceptable, and our law enforcement authorities will show no mercy towards people who turn our roads into party spots and disregard either the rules of the road or the Covid-19 regulations,” intoned transport minister Fikile Mbalula, even though the event went ahead without blue lights to add colour and flash to proceedings.
We know our politicians like to act tough, and as SA stands at the foot of the mountain confronting a new and more dangerous variant of the coronavirus, it now seems almost inevitable that tougher restrictions will be necessary, and perhaps urgently too, as the much-feared overwhelming of our hospitals and other facilities unfolds away from the broader public view.
Stricter new rules harking back to the darkest days of our hard lockdown may be necessary as the disease is carried between provinces. But tougher regulations are becoming increasingly more likely also because enough South Africans insist on disregarding the protocols, or viewing them as a needless imposition and limitation of their rights. Much of this is driven by a wilful ignorance of the nature of the virus, fuelled by myths that only rich people get it, or that it is a white person’s disease.
This ignorance is fostered by that bottomless pit of dodgy information called the internet. No doubt, people are more than capable of coming up with illogical myths without social media, but idiocies are now propagated exponentially in an instant.
As important in the equation is how authority is seen in SA, and the question will arise as to whether the reliance on the big stick during the hard lockdown has induced a sense of weariness in a public that have come to view the slightest restriction on their absolute right to do whatever they like as an inconvenience to be ignored.
In other words, the opportunity to encourage in people a sense of public-mindedness may have been missed in the eagerness to impose rules that were ridiculed and disregarded, and seemed more like punishment than solution. We’re big on rights; duties, not so much.
Now, more than ever, we need to be made aware that the flipside of freedom and constitutionally enshrined liberty is responsibility. Sometimes one has to curb some rights in the interests of the greater good.
What is so hard to understand here? Unfortunately, the encouragement of a culture of duty and responsibility has seldom featured much in our discourse on constitutionalism, and it may be that the threat of the virus does not leave time for philosophical indulgences.
As we head into a storm that threatens to be worse than the first wave, one can only hope that every South African can make a contribution to helping our battered nation get through this. Conversely, every time a mask is not worn in public is a threat to others, and a threat to our better future.
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