Government’s announcement of lifting curfews unveils the mistruths of its draconian lockdown response since March 26, 2020

By: Clyde Ramalaine

Yesterday, marking the second last day of 2021, a statement from Presidency as guided by the NCCC was released, which essentially centres on an announcement of suspended curfews. Curfews, one of the most senseless weapons in its artillery of Lockdown drama that hitherto defines the State’s response to the COVID-19 virus, is lifted with immediate effect. One must surmise that those who decided on this thought would blindly shout hallelujah and celebrate them.

Let us, therefore, first understand what this statement hopes to achieve. This administration is an image-led public relations-driven one. Furthermore, an administration successfully internalized the ANC factional identity into the cabinet and every sphere of governance. It remains an administration obsessed with a man and his ambitions to stay in political power, notwithstanding the signs of the times, hopes to gain favour with South Africans. Favour that somehow can translate to a second term for the Lockdown Emperor, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa. Therefore, in its timing, this statement is for the salvaging of a CR-22 political agenda, nothing less and nothing more. We know this because COV ID-19 and its subsequent irrational lockdowns in genesis and sojourn attest to a political tool and a means to an end. The timing of the statement on another score aims to justify the promotion of the interest of a particular factional and elitist class group associated with the incumbent.

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Unfortunately, this whole statement is a pathetic, one-sided attempt to claim Government’s overall response against the COVID-19 virus as a political and health success. It is riddled with non-science but, as expected, political diatribe and cheap platitudes in honour of self. As expected, this statement is chronically anchored in the feverish marketing of jabs and boosters. Lastly, it seeks to be celebrating the success of lockdowns that now brought us to a point where South Africans can once again enjoy their constitutionally guaranteed liberties of movement and association beyond silly inexplicable curfews.

Furthermore, it is essentially built on the combination of at least six sophisms I herewith wish to postulate since we remain deceived by the highest office in our SA’s democracy. I see at least six because there may be more reasons.

1. THAT CURFEWS EVER WORKED:

With this announcement, the Government wants us to believe that curfews measurable in its notorious levels has kept SA in suppressing the spreading of the virus and all its variants. This statement inadvertently admits curfews were never a scientific response but a political scheme. We have lived through the agony of irrational curfews that played with our emotions, intellects, and social lives to think the virus is at its most active in impact between 10 pm and 5 am. We lived through announced levels of lockdown informed by this unscientific assumption. We saw how the Government abused its citizenry in every possible way, from unleashing soldiers to violating essentially black people until Collins Khosa and 11 more were killed. We experienced an economy shedding much-needed jobs. Businesses were closed forever, all directly related to this irrational knee-jerk but one-eye power-drunk regulations.

2. THAT SA CURRENT JABBED NUMBERS ARE SATISFACTORILY – AS HAVING REACHED THE PUNTED HERD-IMMUNITY PERCENTAGE:

You will recall how we were bombarded by the South African President and his local Fauci, Prof. Salim Karim. Karim paraded as the self-appointed guru on COVID-19 virus when we all knew COVID has no gurus but only students to varying degrees, about flattening of curves and the objective of reaching herd-immunity. They pontificated herd immunity as the salvation guaranteeing our future. Herd-immunity, according to them, is attained when 70% of the adult population of South Africans are jabbed. Hence the emotional blackmail campaign to jab South Africans en-masse. I ask you, can the Ramaphosa-led State with a straight-face confirm that we have now reached herd-immunity numbers, and I show you its big fat lie. We all know SA is millions of miles away from this number.

On a recent flight from Cape Town, an aisle separated Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Professor Mahdi, and myself. Coincidently we both follow each other in discourse. I started the conversation to ask him when the politics on COVID-19 would stop. He laughed and retorted: What do you mean global or local politics? I said both, but my interest was SA.

Mahdi then painstakingly shared with me that the announcement of the omicron variant by a group of scientists was purely based on theoretical data and not any clinical evidence. According to him, clinical evidence-based information was only possible four weeks from the date of the omicron variant announcement. He was categorically clear that the Government’s response in communications of this virus from inception remains more than suspect, and the people simply do not trust it to lead on such. [Something some of us long raised]. More startling was what he said next. The Government’s response is all about numbers. While the claim of vaccination is publicized at 25 million, the more objective and honest number is around 10million.

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He went further to say that currently, over  17 million capsules of jabs are in storage because the people are simply not interested. Mahdi also noted that the idea of jabbing children was immaterial and irrelevant, but since the Government is about numbers, children are jabbed. As expected, it became clear from my interaction with Mahdi that there are at least two groups of scientists and one group has the ear of the President. Incidentally, as we landed, Mahdi turned on his phone and found that the President now invited him and others to talk.

He went further to say that currently, over  17 million capsules of jabs are in storage because the people are simply not interested. Mahdi also noted that the idea of jabbing children was immaterial and irrelevant, but since the Government is about numbers, children are jabbed. As expected, it became clear from my interaction with Mahdi that there are at least two groups of scientists and one group has the ear of the President. Incidentally, as we landed, Mahdi turned on his phone and found that the President now invited him and others to talk.

5. THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE-BASED IMPACT OF BOOSTERS:

Unfortunately, the Ramaphosa-led still perpetuates and preaches the false new gospel of boosters. While it is undeniably evident that everyone jabbed is not really protected and would require ongoing booster-shots, no one knows for how long. Israel, arguably the nation with the highest jabbed population [89%], confirms this myth of jabbed people as protected against the virus and its variants. Ramaphosa and his Government promote boosters when jabs are not protecting people. They promote booster – shots when no science has yet confirmed the necessary impact to stymie the virus and its mutated variants.

6. THAT ITS  10, 25, 50, AND 100 DESIGNATION OF NUMBERS FOR GATHERINGS WERE BACKED BY SCIENCE:

Perhaps the biggest lie this statement unveils is that the regulations that wrecked social life in gathering people across multi-platforms measurable in prescribed numbers of 10, 25, 50, and 100 were borne out by science. Their lies and mistruths continue as they now see nothing wrong for South Africans to meet in our 10000s. Why are you saying this? I hear you retort.

You would recall how the Government felt a need to do physical clean-ups to underscore social cohesion after the July unrests. Mandela-Day became opportune as a political means for this. Without any change in science for the level we were on at the time, an announcement was made that South Africans could engage in clean-up in their numbers. I guess the virus was asleep at the time of this decision. We saw it again a week before the most recent Municipal Elections. Despite grave warnings of predicted the fourth wave, politics and elections outweighed science [ if it ever was scientific] that saw large gatherings for political campaigning.

Its current announcement flies in the face of the whole world that brandish infection rates as growing exponentially.

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Well, the million-dollar question: Why is it permissible for South Africans to now gather in their 1000s? We always could because the 10, 25, 50, or 100  numbers for the gathering were nowhere borne out by any science. It was never scientific but political interest-based.

I have consistently said this entire plandemic is a  politically, economically, and globalist agenda control-driven exercise which is an insult to science. Meaning there was, is, and never will be and science in the Ramaphosa -ed State’s response to the virus. I am also on record to have said, while COVID-19 claimed Donald Trump’s Presidency, it rescued Ramaphosa’s ongoing leadership because had it not been for his lockdowns, he would long have been out of office.

In case you forget, the ANC will celebrate its 110 years with its annual January 8 Manifesto Statement in less than ten days. CR-22, meaning Ramaphosa, based on the outcomes of ANC Regional Conferences, suffered losses where least expected. Thus, these regional conferences begin to point to a no-confidence vote for a second term as ANC and SA presidencies. The announcement of the lifting of curfews must be understood in this political context. It signals a valuable means to aid his campaigning to gain the hardened hearts of those in and outside the ANC that long lost confidence in his fitness to lead. Suspending curfews is an attempt to respond to the booing Ramaphosa suffered, which translates to the 45.6%  voter trust the ANC registered in the most recent municipal elections.  In typical father, Christmas sense Ramaphosa is trying to bring South Africans an apparent ‘gif’ of so-called freedom with the immediate removal of curfews. He expects us to clap our hands and see him as successful.

It is time for South Africans to keep the Ramaphosa-led State and its undeniable Lockdown crimes accountable. I am not advocating for another Commission, but criminal charges and litigation in the form of the historical Nuremberg Trials that must bring Ramaphosa, his COGTA Minister Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and deep-pocketed cohorts of one-sided scientists and the multinational drug companies as beneficiaries of these lockdowns must be brought to book in their personal capacities.

South Africa knows today what some of us always knew, the Ramaphosa-led Government’s treacherous lockdown response to COVID-19 was never borne out by science, but it was always political.