[imagesource: Veli Nhlapo]

Well done on making it to Tuesday.

We are one day closer to the weekend, but to ensure you stay grounded, here’s your reminder that our economy is still in dire straits and our healthcare system is already stretched well beyond what it can handle.

Let’s deal with the economy first, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s sobering letter to the nation yesterday.

Writing that we are not alone, with other countries around the world also experiencing a “job loss tsunami”, Ramaphosa said the government’s key decisionmakers “have all been keenly aware of the consequences of shutting down economic activity during the lockdown that was absolutely critical to save the lives of our people”:

For a country such as ours, which was already facing an unemployment crisis and weak economic growth, difficult decisions and difficult days lie ahead…

There are no quick-fixes and we have to be realistic about our prospects, especially about the time it will take for our economy to recover. Even the advanced economies will contract substantially because of COVID-19 and it will take a long time for economic output to return to pre-pandemic levels.

He finished the letter by saying he does retain a sense of optimism, stressing that the “lockdown was necessary and has saved lives”.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been outspoken about ending the alert level lockdown measures for a while now, and ahead of finance minister Tito Mboweni’s emergency budget being tabled on Wednesday, presented a list of demands.

Some of those below, raised by DA finance spokesperson Geordin Hill-Lewis, and summed up via TimesLIVE:

• Immediately end the lockdown and replace it with a standard set of evidence-based safety rules and guidelines, where each regulation is directly linked to reducing the spread of Covid-19. This to protect lives and livelihoods;
• Sell all state-owned enterprises that are not able to survive without bailouts because the country can no longer afford to be a “blesser” for SAA or “a new nuclear build”;
• End Eskom’s monopoly and open the electricity market to competition by allowing municipalities to buy directly from producers;
• Abolish BEE and target redress policies around disadvantage rather than race, in order to make state spending vastly more efficient and strongly in the interest of the poor.

I can definitely get on board with sending SAA to its grave, but expecting BEE to be abolished is wishful thinking at best. You can’t, and don’t, redress centuries of racial inequality in 26 years.

Following what can best be described as a disastrous 2019, one thing the DA has done successfully during the lockdown is ensuring that the party remains in the news, especially with regards to interim leader, John Steenhuisen (pictured up top).

As Stephen Grootes points out for the Daily Maverick, “moments of national crisis against an apolitical, invisible foe (such as a virus) can be testing for opposition parties”, who run the risk of being seen to undermine a nation united against a single enemy.

Steenhuisen has been visibly critical of Ramaphosa and the ANC’s approach, and it appears to be working:

The acres of airtime that have been gained by the DA, and Steenhuisen in particular, is in stark contrast to that garnered by the EFF. Its leader, Julius Malema, has been almost silent until recently. The difference may well be that the DA has a bigger and deeper base of voters. This allows the party more room to move, because it has a large group of people whom it can rely on.

This constituency is also, broadly speaking, against the lockdown. Thus, Steenhuisen has had much latitude to attack the regulations instituted by the government during this time. Again, this is in stark contrast to the EFF, which has argued for a longer and stricter lockdown…

For Steenhuisen, being the public face of the DA so often during this difficult time has almost certainly ensured that he will win the party’s leadership election, when it is eventually held.

Whilst Steenhuisen looks to have the party leadership locked in, the long-term ability of the DA to win back the voters it lost in 2019’s provincial and national elections remains less certain.

In order to grow that support, the party needs to appeal to more than simply “middle-class white people”, which is itself a support base that took a knock in the wake of the growth of the Freedom Front Plus:

The stakes are high. And it is the approach to Covid-19 and the lockdown that could be a determining factor. All the effort put in by Steenhuisen and others during this time could end up being a non-winner for the DA.

One of the painful realities for the DA is that the pandemic has changed very little in our politics – it merely entrenched the divides and heated debates that we’ve had before.

Broadening the party support won’t be helped by the return to Twitter of a certain 69-year-old with a penchant for inflammatory rhetoric, either.

I guess South Africans can just be thankful that we don’t have any elections scheduled for this year, meaning we can watch the 2020 US battle descend into chaos without fear of the same here at home.

For now.

[sources:presidency&timeslive&dailymav]