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The family of Collin Khosa — allegedly killed by members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in Alexandra — have sent a letter of demand to President Cyril Ramaphosa, asking him to explain what steps will be taken to ensure there is no abuse of power during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Khosa — a father of three — died on Friday April 10. A “preliminary medical opinion is that the cause of death is directly related to the assault by the members of the SANDF”, said the letter of demand. A charge of murder has been laid. His family have now also demanded financial compensation for the loss of support.

In the letter, attorney Wikus Steyl of Ian Levitt Attorneys detailed the assault — according to people that were there. He said that female SANDF soldiers came into Khosa’s yard with sjamboks and accused him of breaking the lockdown regulations because they noticed an unattended camping chair in the yard and a “half-full cup of alcohol”.

When Khosa protested that this was lawful, they became agitated, raided his fridge and ordered him outside. They called for backup, said the letter, which included a number of vehicles from the SANDF and the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD).

Three more SANDF soldiers arrived and, without inquiring any further details from Khosa, they “manhandled and assaulted Mr Khosa in the following manner. In particular, they: poured beer on top of his head and on his body; one member of the SANDF held his hand behind his back, while the other choked him; slammed him against the cement wall; hit him with the butt of the machine gun; kicked, slapped him, punched him on his face and on his stomach and ribs; and slammed him against the steel gate”.

Videos taken by witnesses were deleted by SANDF members, said Steyl. When he was taken to his house, he “later presented with certain signs such as vomiting, losing speech and consciousness and progressively lost his ability to walk”, said the letter. He was declared dead by emergency services, after they arrived.

The letter is also addressed to Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and to the JMPD’s David Tembe.

Non-derogable constitutional rights 

“In our submission there is no justification of the actions by SANDF and JMPD,” said the letter. The assault was a violation of the constitutional rights to life, dignity and freedom and to be free from all forms of violence, said Steyl.

“Despite the national lockdown, every South African enjoys these rights. As per the provisions of section 37 of the Constitution, these rights are so fundamental that they may not be derogated from, even during a state of emergency,” said the letter.

The letter from Khosa’s family also demands that the SANDF and JMPD publicly condemn the conduct of their members, and for a report on what steps have been taken to discipline them. They also asked for confirmation that the relevant soldiers and police officers “be immediately removed from the public and be placed on suspension, while an investigation is ongoing”.

“This incident shows that members of the defence force believe that they can act with impunity towards vulnerable and poor South Africans. We ask that you explain what steps will be taken to ensure that there is no abuse of power by the SANDF during the lockdown.”

article by Mail and Guardian

The extended five-week national lockdown has postponed South Africa’s worst-case Covid-19 scenario to September, a government projection shows.

With no lockdown, South Africa was estimated to reach its peak coronavirus infections in July. A five-week lockdown, that has paralysed the economy, is buying the government two more months to prepare for a flooding of hospitals at the end of winter.

This is according to a presentation made to Parliament’s portfolio committee on health this week by the acting director general of the department of health, Anban Pillay, a copy of which News24 has obtained.

It is the most detailed official analysis yet of the current situation that has been made public since the first infection was reported at the beginning of March.

Other key findings in Pillay’s presentation include:

• In a worst-case scenario, Gauteng would see over 1.5 million Covid-19 infections at the end of winter, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with one million;
• The country has less than half the number of ventilators needed to deal with peak infection. Public and private hospitals currently have a total of 3 216 ventilators, compared to the 7 000 we need, and
• The country currently has 4 909 critical care hospital beds available, but the need for beds in intensive care units could exceed 14 700 at the highest level of infection.

Only “severe to critical Covid-19 patients” will be treated at hospitals, while “mild to moderately infected patients” will be accommodated at field hospitals where basic medical care will be provided.

The government’s “readiness for worst case scenario” plan was informed by research from UCT’s Modelling and Simulation Hub Africa. According to this scenario, if the lockdown was suspended this Thursday after three weeks, the peak would have hit the country around 18 August.

Pillay told MPs during a digital meeting of the committee that the health department is seeing a different trajectory in the infection rate compared to countries such as South Korea, Britain, the United States and Spain.

According to Pillay’s presentation, based on statistics prepared by Professor Tulio de Oliveira of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation & Sequencing Platform (KRISP), the gradient of the curve is flatter than some countries which have been seriously affected.

The presentation, which also covers the state of readiness of both the public and private sector, tracking and tracing strategy as well as detail about hotspots across the country, was given to MPs the day after President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday announced an extension to the lockdown until the end of April.

Although Ramaphosa said there is “sufficient evidence” to show the lockdown is working, but that it is too early to make a “definitive analysis of the progression of the disease”, he did not expand on which datasets, epidemiological modelling, or projections the government used to base its decision on to expand the lockdown.

It is known that the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), that conducts testing on behalf of government, is not close to reaching is target of 36 000 tests per day.

The president did consult widely before he announced his decision, including with opposition leaders, provincial premiers and representatives of business and labour, but he has not made public what the exact statistics or projections which informed the decision to extend the lockdown from three to five weeks are.

‘Scary’ projections

The presidency on Friday and Saturday did not respond to questions for comment.

A detailed set of questions was sent to presidential spokesperson Khusela Diko on Friday enquiring what metrics the national command council, which is co-ordinating the government’s response to the coronavirus, used to determine that the lockdown must be extended. She did not return a call or respond to a message on Saturday.

John Steenhuisen, the DA leader and leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, says the lack of data on the spread of the virus is concerning.

“There’s a complete absence of empirical data or detail about which metrics government will use to measure whether the lockdown is successful or not. They’re not playing open cards with the public.”

A senior government official privy to the decision-making process said on Saturday afternoon Ramaphosa is informed “by the best brains in the country” before he makes decisions and that extending the lockdown was based on scientific evidence put before him.

The projections which swayed Ramaphosa are “scary”, the official said, and added that government did not want to create panic.

Professor Cheryl Cohen, one of the lead epidemiologists at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) told News24 that she hopes the projections given to government will be released soon.

Martin Kingston, the executive chairperson of Rothschild & Co in South Africa, who is co-ordinating the response to Covid-19 by all business formations through Business for South Africa, told News24 he is “satisfied” that the decision to extend the lockdown was based on “the best available scientific evidence at the time”.

“We are in constant dynamic contact with government, from the minister of health to National Treasury, the department of labour and the department of trade and industry. I am absolutely satisfied that the decision was taken with the best available scientific evidence at the time.

“But we all know, and government acknowledges it, that testing is inadequate and needs to be expanded,” he said.

The presentation made to MPs gives insight into the the healthcare system’s state of readiness:

• According to the latest available information the country has less than half the number of ventilators needed to deal with peak infection. The public healthcare system currently has 1 111 operational ventilators, with 2 105 operational in the private healthcare system for a total of 3 216 ventilators. According to projections the healthcare system would need 7 000 ventilators to deal with the virus, a shortage of 3 784.
• There are currently only 3 318 critical care beds available, with 2 140 of those in private hospitals; there are 2 722 high care beds in the country, with only 1 082 of those in the public sector; there is a total of 119 416 hospital beds available, across South Africa.
• During peak infection in an optimistic scenario, and with one lockdown enforced, the peak need for beds in intensive care units could exceed 14 700 beds at the highest level, and 4 100 in the lowest level.

Siviwe Gwarube, the DA’s spokesperson for health, says she is concerned that although the presentation went into more detail than anything seen before, there is still a lack of data available.

“We’re trying to access data, but what we’ve got now is wholly inadequate.”

Article by News 24

The EFF has announced that all its public representatives will contribute a third of their salaries to the Covid-19 Solidarity Fund.

The announcement came less than two hours after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a similar contribution by himself, members of his cabinet, deputy ministers and premiers for the next three months.

Ramaphosa made the announcement while telling the nation that the nationwide lockdown had been extended by two weeks, taking us to the end of April.

The EFF welcomed the extension, but the DA wasn’t convinced, saying that Rampahosa had made a mistake in believing that the decision to extend was a “binary choice between health concerns and economic concerns”.

The EFF said: “As part of our contribution to the fight against Covid-19, all EFF public representatives, inclusive of MPs, members of provincial legislatures, and councillors, will contribute a third of our monthly salaries to the Covid-19 Solidarity Fund,” said party spokesperson Vuyani Pambo.

The party welcomed the decision of the national executive and all premiers of contributing a third of their salaries to the fund, and called on all public representatives in all spheres of government — and all employed people with adequate disposal income — to do the same so that the country can assemble enough resources to fight the rapid spread while still safeguarding SA’s fiscal sovereignty.

It also registered opposition to the government asking for loans from “rapacious” international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, whose loans, it said, will come with irrational and often dangerous conditions.

The EFF welcomed the extension of the lockdown by an additional 14 days as a measure to contain and subsequently eliminate the spread of the coronavirus.

It called upon all South Africans to abide by the lockdown regulations.

“We believe that it should only be a scientific and data based analysis of the spread that should lead to the suspension of the lockdown.

“While we welcome the extension of the lockdown, we are not convinced that government has taken adequate measures to mitigate against the economic and subsistence consequences on ordinary people,” he said.

The party called on the government to impose an interest-free payment holiday for three months for all people who cannot afford to make the monthly payments due to the lockdown.

The DA was critical of Rampahosa’s decision to extend the lockdown, labelling it a mistake.

The party said it would have preferred a gradual phasing out of the current lockdown over the coming weeks, as opposed to a continuation of the severe and economically-crippling regulations.

“Our great concern is that President Ramaphosa has justified this extension as if we face a binary choice between health concerns and economic concerns. We believe it is a great mistake to think in terms of lives versus livelihoods.

“This is a false dilemma. Rather, the difficult trade-offs to be made are between lives lost or damaged by Covid-19, and lives lost or damaged by the drastic measures to contain its spread,” said John Steenhuisen.

The lockdown is supposed to end a week today, but there are many in the government who want it extended for far longer – and made subject to even stricter controls, including curfews of (as yet) unspecified duration and scope.

The Minerals Council South Africa – which warned earlier this week of permanent damage to the industry if the lockdown is extended beyond 16 April – has hinted that the government, based on modelling by Johns Hopkins University, might want to extend it to August. That’s at least four months away.

The government has been widely praised for its swift action in locking down the economy while infections were still low (fewer than 1 000) and no deaths had yet been recorded. The number of new infections (roughly 800) since the lockdown began has also been way below projections (4 500 or so), prompting further praise for the effectiveness of its strategy.

However, there is also significant evidence to suggest that starting the lockdown so soon may have been a mistake.

Left out

Seasonal factors, for one, seem to have been left out of account. The SARS-Cov-2 virus, like others of its kind, is more easily transmitted when temperatures are between 5˚C and 11˚C. That suggests that the pandemic could peak only in June.

In addition, lockdowns are most likely to succeed when they are combined with major testing and tracing to identify those infected. But the government has done very little testing and is far from ready to roll this out at any scale.

Only about 63 700 tests have been carried out to date, compared to close on 300 000 in Australia and more than 460 000 in South Korea. Moreover, of the 63 700 conducted here, a mere 6 000 or so have been carried out in the public sector (and the rest in private laboratories).

The public sector is still poorly prepared for the mass testing promised by President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, when he said that 10 000 field workers would soon be moving into villages, towns, and cities to expand the screening, testing, and tracking process.

Since then, the health ministry has made much of its plans to use 60 or more mobile vans to spearhead the mass testing drive. But none of these vans is yet able to perform on-the-spot analysis. Instead, the 20 or so vans soon to be sent out will carry nurses, who will screen people for signs of the disease, take samples from those with symptoms, and send those samples back for analysis by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS).

In the dark

This approach to testing is likely to miss at least 50% to 70% of the people infected with the virus. This is evident from both Iceland – which found that 50% of those infected were asymptomatic – and China, where the general testing recently initiated has shown that 70% of virus victims have no symptoms at all. If testing remains confined to those with obvious symptoms, this will leave the country in the dark as to both the true Covid-19 death rate and the extent of ‘herd’ immunity.

In addition, once the samples gathered by the mobile vans reach the NHLS, further delays are likely to arise. Only ten of its laboratories are currently being used for testing – and its notional capacity of 5 000 tests a day is clearly not, in practice, being met. Various measures are being taken to expand its capacity to 36 000 samples a day by the end of April. But, even if this target can be achieved, it will still not be enough.

In practice, thus, the government cannot move ahead with its testing roll-out until May – by which time the lockdown is supposed to have ended. But if mass testing starts only after people have begun moving around again, it will be far more difficult to ‘identify and isolate existing clusters of infection before new ones break out’, as James Myburgh, editor of Politicweb.co.za, points out.

CAN THE COUNTRY OR ITS PEOPLE SUSTAIN SUCH A PROTRACTED LOCKDOWN?

This suggests that the lockdown may be needed at least until the end of May. That would mean a duration of nine weeks, rather than the promised three. It will then be arguable, of course, that the lockdown should be further extended until the end of June, when winter will have begun. And it could also be claimed that it has to stay in place until late in August (as the Minerals Council fears), when spring is finally at hand. That would mean a lockdown of 21 weeks – or seven times longer than the government has thus far said.

Can the country or its people sustain such a protracted lockdown? Renowned economist Ricardo Hausmann disputes this, saying general lockdowns could have catastrophic consequences in countries, like South Africa, without the fiscal space to support millions of people barred from their normal work and income.

Says Professor Hausmann: ‘At the limit, people will have to decide between a 10% chance of dying from the virus and a 100% chance of starving to death.’ What cannot be sustained simply ‘will not last’, he adds. Which means the lockdown might have to be abandoned before the virus has been adequately tracked and tamed.

Too soon

If anything, thus, the government seems to have gone for a general lockdown too soon: before it was ready to embark on mass testing and tracing, and without regard for seasonal factors.

The government also seems to have assumed that a general lockdown is the only approach to follow. Mr Ramaphosa has praised the Wuhan lockdown in China, claiming that this is ‘the most effective way for a society to contain the spread of the disease’. But other countries have contained the virus without locking down: among them South Korea and Sweden.

South Africa must now avoid a looming humanitarian crisis by adopting a far more nuanced approach.  At minimum – and especially if the lockdown is to be extended – it must allow everyone to work if they can do so while maintaining a sufficient degree of social isolation.

The country must urgently get as many people as possible back to work to mitigate the massive damage to the economy, reduce the loss of income, temper the incidence of hunger, guard against an upsurge in other illnesses, and preclude widespread resistance and unrest.

Ease congestion

The government must also find ways of targeting the lockdown at the people most at risk – those aged 60 or more, plus those with compromised immune systems. However, far from trying to target the people in these categories, the government is instead planning to ease congestion in some 29 teeming informal settlements by moving many of their residents into temporary accommodation (in converted shipping containers) on land nearby.

But this plan is still in the consultation phase and cannot easily be implemented. It is sure to generate widespread objections, which is why the government is still trying to ‘convince residents that it is in their interest to be relocated’, as a spokesman for the housing department has said.

A far better option is to encourage temporary relocation to isolation centres – to be set up in empty hotels, university residences, and game reserve camps, for instance – by making tax-funded self-isolation vouchers available to those in need. These should be used for the benefit of vulnerable individuals in overcrowded areas, who cannot avoid close contact with the many people with whom they live or share toilets and taps.

THE CURRENT CHORUS OF PRAISE FOR THE PRESIDENT IS SIMPLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH

The time has come, in short, to start looking far more critically at what the state is doing to counter Covid-19. The current chorus of praise for the president is simply not good enough.

Maintaining a general – and unnecessarily strict – lockdown for any more than three weeks will unleash a humanitarian disaster. Extending it for another four months, as some in the ANC would like to do, will enormously compound the harm.

South Africans must stop their mute acceptance of what the government is doing, revive their critical faculties, and start coming up (as we in the IRR have been seeking to do) with better ideas about how best to overcome the pandemic.

Article by Daily Friend

Under lockdown, South Africa has had to come to terms with a new concept – the idea of an ‘essential business’. These are the companies that the government has allowed to keep operating during this period.

In a broad sense, the way that essential businesses have been defined seems reasonable. The government has clearly applied its mind to what is required to keep a country going.

Healthcare services are obviously necessary. Grocery stores need to stay open so that people can get food. The media must be able to keep the country informed. Financial services need to facilitate payments and keep capital markets functioning.

In order to slow the spread of Covid-19, it makes sense to limit activity to companies in these sectors. However, does that really mean that all other businesses aren’t ‘essential’?

Recognising reality

In a recent webcast, Jerry Gundlach, founder and chair of US investment firm DoubleLine Capital, posed exactly this question.

“There is no such thing as a non-essential business,” Gundlach argued. “They are all essential to their owners, and those businesses are interconnected to one another.”

This is something South Africa is going to have to grapple with in a very real sense when the lockdown is over. It is a reality that will be recognised in two ways.

The first is that every business exists because it is supplying something to somebody. Your local hairdresser might seem the furthest thing from ‘essential’, but it wouldn’t exist if customers didn’t feel they needed it.

In fact, after weeks of South Africans having to go without a visit to the hairdresser, any salon that is able to open its doors again is likely to be inundated with clientele. It will quite possibly be a boom time not only for them, but also for beauty parlours, spas and wellness centres.

This will be a demonstration of just how ‘essential’ these businesses are.

Links in the chain

Examples like this, where companies and individuals are able to respond to a pent-up demand, could well be a good news story post-lockdown. However, there will be others that are far less positive.

Many businesses that are supplying parts or services within larger supply chains are going to struggle to survive. Even if they do, they may start operating at reduced capacity after the lockdown.

This will have knock-on effects. Any supply chain only runs as well as its least efficient component, and this could mean major disruptions to many parts of the economy as capacity is re-established. This could take years.

Read: Banks are taking applications for Oppenheimer donation

Put another way, every business in a supply chain is ‘essential’ to keeping it functioning in a productive manner. Unfortunately, the lockdown is going to prove how true this is.

Bread and butter

The second reality, which the country is already having to face up to, is that every business is ‘essential’ to its owners and the people who work there. Companies provide jobs and livelihoods to millions of South Africans.

Some businesses are already accepting that they cannot survive for 21 days without any cash flow. People are already being retrenched. This is going to make life extremely hard for many South Africans, some of whom would have felt they were in secure jobs just a few weeks ago.

What can’t be ignored is that companies that create jobs and pay wages are an ‘essential’ part of any social system. By generating profits and paying taxes, they are also an ‘essential’ contributor to the country’s greater wellbeing.

If South Africa loses large numbers of businesses due to the need to respond to the threat of Covid-19, the country will be significantly worse off.

This is an unpleasant reality, but perhaps it will also be a necessary shock. It will be very obvious when South Africa emerges from lockdown just how ‘essential’ business is. In a country where attitudes towards business are often antagonistic, this will hopefully be eye-opening.

The country will not recover and will certainly not prosper unless we recognise just how ‘essential’ every business is.

Encouragingly, a lot of money and effort has been pledged to supporting as many businesses as possible through this period. Hopefully the same focus can be brought to creating a more enabling environment for them once it is over.

Article by Moneyweb

Justice Project South Africa founder Howard Dembovsky talks to Clement Manyathela about the estimated tax and other revenue losses during the 21-day lockdown ban on cigarette and alcohol sales.

When it comes to the sale of cigarettes we are losing approximately R35 million per day in levies and excises that are imposed on cigarettes, but it also encourages the illicit trade in cigarettes which has been an ongoing problem in South Africa for a long time and it is encouraging organised crime.

Howard Dembovsky, Founder – Justice Project South Africa

When it comes to alcohol the losses are about R100 million a day in alcohol levies and revenues.

Howard Dembovsky, Founder – Justice Project South Africa

Dembovsky says these bans are short-sighted and unnecessary.

Cape Town – Calls are mounting for the City to offer some relief to taxpayers and residents struggling because of Covid-19 and the resultant lockdown.

Sandra Dickson of Stop COCT / DearCapeTown said this relief should include four months’ relief for all ratepayers – from paying rates, refuse removal and water sanitation – permanent scrapping of water and electricity levies, and zero increase for any services tariff for 2020/21.

With the current draft 2020/21 budget still on the table, Dickson said this can be adjusted to deal with the Covid-19 aftermath.

“Many businesses are expected to close and even more people are going to lose their jobs. We urge the City to take early measures to avoid the mayhem, which will impact the City’s accounting system when hundreds of thousands of municipal accounts go into arrears as a result of the inability of residents to pay their utility bills,” she said.

The City of Cape Town has around 600000 ratepayers, and if a large portion of them fail to pay their bills in the next few months, the City will find its accounting system in a mess, Dickson said.

“Banks and other financial institutions are giving their clients relief by deferring payments or spreading payments over future months. The City is not a profit-making organisation. It has immediate cash reserves of more than R10 billion. In the long term the City has more than R18bn in cash reserves,” Dickson pointed out.

She said this was ratepayers’ money, accumulated over years, which should have been used for service delivery in the first place, adding that it was therefore reasonable for ratepayers to expect relief to be given by using the City’s vast cash reserves.

Dickson urged the City to “serve its constituents and return some of the money and surpluses that have accumulated via service tariffs and levies over many years”.

Delft Ratepayers Association chairperson Mogamat Titus said a “breather” from the bills will ensure that poor families who have found themselves out of jobs spend the little cash they have on basic needs.

“Lockdown is now about survival, and most families are worried whether they will have enough food.

“Unemployment is at its highest and with the little that they get most of their earnings are spent on food, which is an essential during this lockdown,” Titus said.

Mayco member for finance Ian Neilson said the City was considering such proposals together with a large number of other suggestions.

He said the City will first ensure that it secures the delivery of basic services and crucial deliverables to ensure people’s health and safety.

“The City’s programme will be in the best interests of all Capetonians, and it will be funded by implementing some of the strategies listed by Stop COCT, among others. This will include cutting the salary budget of the City, drawing from budgets no longer needed due to the lockdown (travel/events etc),” he said.

Neilson said it was a myth that the City had funds sitting in bank accounts which do not have a specific purpose. “We ensure that we have enough cash to cover working capital needs, and the rest is used to fund budget needs, including current programmes.”

@Mtuzeli

mthuthuzeli.ntseku@inl.co.za

As speculation mounts in political and business circles about whether Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will revise the 2020/21 budget in light of South Africa’s dramatically altered economic conditions, it has emerged that government has initiated talks to launch a massive infrastructure project to kick-start and boost the economy once the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has run its course.

Economists predict that the economy may shrink by between 2% and 7% due to the 21-day lockdown announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa almost two weeks ago, as well as the country’s sovereign credit rating downgrade by ratings agencies Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.

Speculation in government circles is that the shrinking economy could increase the official unemployment rate to 50%.

A senior government official with knowledge of the talks said that, although officials at Treasury were preoccupied with dealing with Covid-19, they were already thinking about how to resuscitate the economy once the deadly virus was gone.

The official said Treasury would also be forced to review the budget presented by Mboweni in February.

“We are in a different world now. All the budgetary assumptions we had made are out of the window. All the figures, projections and scenarios we had referred to are irrelevant. The question is how soon we can present a new budget to the nation.

Maybe not necessarily an entirely new budget, but a significant review of the initial budget is inevitable. We have no choice; the world has changed dramatically. We may have to cut the budget by more than R260 billion. We may be forced to not increase wages above inflation. What I am saying is that we have to go back to the drawing board.”

It was a “great opportunity for us to reboot our economy”, he said, adding that Ramaphosa had gained political capital and had been emboldened by his handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

A former Treasury bureaucrat said government “will definitely have to look at the budget again, as well as all the numbers they have tabled. There will be no economic activity in the first quarter of this year.

As such, there will be massive under-collection by the SA Revenue Service [Sars]. There is a correlation between economic activity and revenue collection. There will be subdued economic activity in the next three months and we will have a deep recession.”

The official said: “Government is looking into a massive infrastructure spend programme … to get us out of the current situation. The only way to kick-start the economy is through an infrastructure programme [of] not less than R2 trillion. There is really no way we will be able to get out of this fallout without [this].

With unemployment set to rise to about 50%, [such an] infrastructure programme will draw a lot of people into employment. Granted, some of the jobs will be temporary, but it they will be jobs nevertheless.”

While details about the infrastructure programme are sketchy at the moment, the official said the multitrillion-rand scheme, which could last for between three and five years, would incorporate projects on energy, transport and logistics, rail, education, housing, health, dams, and roads.

Government, the official said, would consider various funding models, including borrowing money from the Public Invest Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the New Development Bank.

Funding from asset managers and other private lenders would also be considered, he said, adding that, while the economy would be battered in the short term, the reconstruction afterwards would offer Treasury an opportunity to implement drastic reforms in the economy.

As the economy declined, unemployment levels would increase dramatically and, as companies retrenched, the country’s tax base would shrink and the deficit on the budget would rise, he said, adding that the implications for government were big.

“The question is, what are we doing? We are introducing the structural reforms we spoke about. We are reorganising ourselves as a government. We are talking about actions that must be taken immediately after Covid-19.”

Early this week, Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter reported that the agency had collected R1.356 trillion in taxes last year. This was R66.2 billion short of the projected R1.42 trillion.

The official said he had also heard that Treasury and Ramaphosa’s infrastructure investment office, headed by former Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa, were working on an infrastructure plan that would be announced in due course.

Article by News 24

JOHANNESBURG – Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded South Africa’s credit rating to BB from BB+, sending it further into “junk” territory while also assigning a negative outlook.

Fitch has on Friday cited “the lack of a clear path towards government debt stabilisation as well as the expected impact of the COVID-19 shock on public finances and growth”.

This comes after Moody’s put the country in junks status a week ago.

Cape Town – Mass evacuation plans are at an advanced stage to possibly move tens of thousands of people across four provinces in South Africa.

Entire townships in the Western Cape, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are to be moved to safe zones in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

It is a plan to de-congest extremely dense informal settlements to prevent infection rates. In the Western Cape alone, thousands of residents from two informal settlements in Khayelitsha are to be temporarily removed.

The communities of Taiwan as well as eNkanini informal settlements have been notified of the plans to have them evacuated from their homes.

According to National Department of Human Settlements spokesperson, McIntosh Polela, these plans were already at an advanced stage.

“While this is urgent, it is also an initiative that requires a sensitive approach.”

While he could not confirm the number of people who would be removed from their homes, he said consultations would need to take place as many have historically refused to leave places common to them.

“Historically, our communities have resisted being moved. As such, we are careful that they are consulted and assured that they are going to be moved not far from the current place of their residence. We also cannot communicate some aspects of this initiative because of the ongoing consultations,” he said.

“Several communities in four provinces have been identified for the temporary relocations. The measure is aimed at mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The department of human settlements is however not giving out the names of the identified communities, “because we do not want to cause unnecessary panic. We recognise that moving people from their homes can be stressful, hence we will allow for consultations to take place before giving this information publicly,” added Polela.

Land parcels have been transferred from the Department of Public Works and other state entities.

The evacuation plans come as the Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize announced that the number of Covid-19 deaths had risen to nine with 1505 infections countrywide. Two of the nine deaths were still being verified.

Three of these deaths occurred over the last 72 hours in St Augustine’s Hospital. This prompted Netcare and the local Department of Health to partially close the hospital after it was found that none of the patients had a history of recent travel, and hadn’t been in contact with anyone with the virus.

Eleven nurses at the hospital tested positive for Covid-19. Measures included the closure of the hospital’s emergency department and stopping all new admissions.

Speaking at a multi-ministerial press conference on Friday, Mkhize said protective gear for health care workers was on the way after government engaged several countries who manufacture the equipment.

This followed threat of legal action by unions to force the government to deliver the required gear for the workers who are on the front line of the Covid-19 battle.

Mkhize said on Friday authorities were talking to China, India and Germany to supply South Africa with protective gear.

“We have written letters to India, we are talking to China and there are suppliers in Germany. Cosatu and National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) have raised the issue and we are engaging them,” said Mkhize.

Nehawu was late yesterday drafting papers to file at the high court on an urgent basis seeking an interdict on behalf of its members against unlawful and reckless exposure to occupational risk to their health and safety by the employer.

South Africa has now experienced a full week in lockdown and law enforcement agencies continue to act against citizens who are not abiding by the rules.

By Friday, the police had released 2005 people on a warning to appear in court. A total of 7450 fines had been issued and 124 people had been granted bail.

But even with the army and police clamping down on citizens who are not obeying the law, the executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Geoffrey Makhubo bemoaned the fact that many were finding ways around the lockdown.

“We have observed that many people are abusing the use of the permits granted to them, permits are not being used for the necessary essential services meant to be. There will be no tolerance to those misleading the law enforcement, people who are not complying will be arrested,” he said.

IOL