[imagesource: Showmax]

Today is day 522 of living under some form of lockdown.

We’ve come a long way since banging pots and pans each evening to thank our healthcare workers, hey?

In fact, these days everybody on social media is a vaccinology expert, and protests take place outside the hospitals where doctors battle to save lives.

The pushback against some of our lockdown measures is easier to understand, with livelihoods lost alongside lives lost.

From next month, a “gripping documentary” about our country’s lockdown “and the effect it has had on society, the economy and the country’s most vulnerable citizens” will air on Showmax.

This synopsis via Business Day:

In March 2020, with fewer than a handful of known infections, SA embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

How much did our lives change? Did the authorities go too far? Can a developing economy follow the lockdown models for fiscally sound countries? What fault lines did Covid-19 expose? What more could have been done to effect change while fighting a devastating pandemic?

These are some of the questions discussed in United Apart SA: Lockdown Remembered, which will be broadcast from September 9.

The trailer was released over the weekend:

Interesting that the title is United Apart SA: Lockdown Remembered, as in past tense, when we are still in a national lockdown.

What’s happened to the odd 8PM address from President Ramaphosa? Are there plans to change the lockdown alert level any time soon?

Will he ever take a question from a member of the media?

Anyway, more on the doccie:

Produced by multi-award-winning Ochre Moving Pictures and directed by Anton Burggraaf, United Apart features South African Medical Research Council president and CEO professor Glenda Gray, clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist Prof Salim Abdool Karim, Reserve Bank deputy governor Rashad Cassim, Business Day editor Lukanyo Mnyanda, Sowetan editor Nwabisa Makunga and Sunday Times editor S’thembiso Msomi, among others.

I’m guessing they won’t be chatting to Tim Noakes, which is probably for the best.

Some of the footage was crowdsourced during the Sunday Times #UnitedApartSA campaign last year, when South Africans submitted video clips, pictures, and voicenotes to show how they were getting through the strictest period of the lockdown.

Not sure my footage of watching Netflix and wearing pyjamas would have added much value.

Anyway, September 9 on Showmax, if you need more lockdown content in your life.

[source:busday]