By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to face a backlash if he introduces lockdown restrictions on Sunday and this is the warning from civil society leaders as the National Coronavirus Command Council met in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant.
This comes after government officials and other political party members flouted lockdown regulations during municipal election campaign events less than a month ago, the Sunday Times reports.
Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele admitted in a post-cabinet briefing on Thursday that some campaign events ignored safety protocols, including social distancing.
Ramaphosa is expected to address the nation on Sunday.
Mosa Moshabela, acting deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said Ramaphosa will struggle to convince South Africans to comply with lockdown rules after an election campaign that ignored them.
Instead, he and other leaders are calling for stricter measures around vaccination uptake, including making Covid-19 vaccines compulsory in South Africa.
Black Business Council chief executive Kganki Matabane also called for mandatory vaccines rather than stricter restrictions that would cripple the economy. His call was echoed by Restaurant Collective spokesperson Grace Harding, who said any form of lockdown will be like a ‘death sentence’.
Business4SA chair Martin Kingston said Ramaphosa should avoid the reintroduction of a stricter lockdown and instead take steps to raise vaccination rates.
“There are two areas that can fundamentally increase and improve the vaccination rate: restricted access to venues and vaccine mandates,” he said. The government should sanction or support both as a matter of extreme urgency, Kingston said.
“It doesn’t need to impose it itself, but obviously we would welcome it if it did, but we do believe they need to acknowledge the need now to aggressively drive the vaccination rate, which is the only way we are going to curb transmission.”
South African scientists this week identified the new variant, known as omicron, setting off alarm bells around the world.
The UK led nations in introducing travel bans on South Africa and its neighbours, posing a threat to the nation’s tourism industry, which accounts for 7% of economic output. The European Union, the US, and much of the world have followed.
Only about a third of South African adults are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The government could announce more stringent lockdown measures in the coming days to curb a resurgence of coronavirus infections and the spread of a new variant.
The National Coronavirus Command Council met Saturday to discuss possible measures while weighing the impact any moves will have on the economy, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks aren’t public.
Among the options being considered are ways to try and boost the nation’s vaccination rate, they said.
There is currently “much uncertainty about the implications of the variant in terms of disease severity, transmissibility and ability to escape immunity” but indications are that protection by the vaccine against severe disease and death “will be largely maintained”.