My fellow South Africans,
This isn’t a “I-told-you-so” post. As much fun as I can have by indulging in the limitless schadenfreude of vindication, the world-shattering scale of the bloodbath resulting from the Economic Apocalypse is just too harrowing. That isn’t a soapbox I want to get up on. It makes me feel sick.
When I viscerally, loudly, and explicitly denounced lockdown as a completely unworkable and dangerous Ivory Tower fantasy masquerading as a solution back in March, before it even started, it wasn’t me being contrarian simply for the sake of being contrarian.
At that stage South Africa had been so firmly caught in an economic death spiral, and longest sustained economic downturn since the end of WWII, that I was convinced that any hard cessation of economic activity – even for just a few weeks – would curb stomp an economy already on its last legs.
To graphically illustrate – our economy was already terminal and on extensive life support. And the government (with the resounding support of the vast majority of South Africans) then emptied a belt-fed machine gun into it. I would say “Good job, everyone! Well done!”, but I fear I would retch.
A brief glance at our economic indicators – a GDP contraction of well over 30% in Q2, 3 million South Africans now additionally unemployed, 1,5 million South Africans still employed but not being paid, a massive 20%+ contraction in take-home pay, massive spike in contact crimes and violence, and daily reports of international disinvestment (and this is only the beginning of our economic collapse) – sadly proves that lockdown will indeed kill more people than the virus could ever hope of doing.
An entire national economy, and the futures of millions, wiped out with a stroke of a pen and in the blink of an eye.
This entire business is a result of a total failure of critical thinking. South Africans behaved like panicked animals, resorting to an immediate knee-jerk reaction without thinking further than their noses as to the price we all will have to pay as a result, instead of behaving like sentient and intelligent beings.
What would have been a 21-day exercise has turned into a 4-month marathon of economic and social murder and terrorism at the hands of a malicious state. A state so many of you insisted we blindly trust, in spite of their extensive track record of betraying and abusing such trust. You are the enablers of your own misery and destruction.
Behold what you have wrought. Drink in and savour the stink of poverty, destitution, misery, and death that results from your lack of due cognisance. And when you have gorged yourselves on the fruits of your labours, close your eyes to the ills you have embraced and sleep the dreamless sleep of those whose conscience is dead.
Because the rest of us are awake. And very, very angry.
Welcome to the Economic Apocalypse.
Written by Gideon Joubert.
Gideon is the owner and editor of Paratus. He first published this letter on the Paratus Facebook page.
