Yesterday South Africans received the good news that the SA Reserve Bank has decided to cut the repo rate by one percentage point. This will go a long way to ease a lot of financial pressures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ended.
It was not a good day for the city of Port Elizabeth. To think that COVID-19 is so powerful that it can - during lockdown - reach locked-up prisoners. A total of 78 inmates and officials in the Eastern Cape tested positive for COVID-19. The total includes inmates and an official at St Albans Correctional Centre in Port Elizabeth.
Nelson Mandela Bay has recorded its second death related to the global pandemic. The number of confirmed cases in the metro has risen to 51. More shocking news came after two Port Elizabeth shops were looted by residents. In Timothy Valley, the metro’s police dispersed looters, but they retaliated and injured a metro police officer. How does looting a spaza shop or grocery store benefit the community? It seems so senseless.
The looting reminded me of a Bob Marley song titled “Burnin’ and lootin’”. The lyrics include: “All that we got, it seems we have lost / We must have really paid the cost / Burnin' and a-lootin' tonight / Say we gonna burn and loot…”.
The coronavirus has shone a light on poverty and poor living conditions in the country’s poorest communities. We can only hope that government, business, community leaders, and councillors can work together in future to prevent something like this from happening again.
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