Month: May 2020

It has been the strangest of times. Catching up on Facebook twice a day provides evidence of widespread wannabe epidemiologists and virologists sharing their views and other experts’ views on the SARS CoV2 virus. The feedback vacillates between the virus being the next big killer of mankind to those who believe that it is a bad strain of seasonal flu. Reference is made to ‘excess deaths’ being recorded in Europe with rather alarming graphs and charts of this excess mortality. Careful scrutiny of the scales of the axes however, allows me to breathe and reach for my cup of coffee instead of the hard tack (non-existent since day 31 of the lockdown, unfortunately).

I have been reading more than ever, I mean what else is there to do between 5.30am and 8am whilst I wait to escape for a morning walk before curfew? I have been watching webinars and interviews with many esteemed scientists and some not so. I have discovered a whole world out there that I did not know existed. Professor Glenda Gray, the chairperson of the SA Medical Research Council and world renowned HIV and vaccine expert, is seriously intelligent and well spoken. Way above my pay grade, but I got the gist of some of what she was saying. Professor Gray also sits on the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) advising government on COVID-19. The esteemed professor Karim chairs MAC and Professor Madhi of Wits is also a member. Professor Madhi speaks with quiet confidence and is not rattled by distracting questions such as when Judge Dennis Davis interviewed him earlier this week. I am not sure how much longer Gray and Madhi will remain members of MAC given their outspoken criticism of the continued effectiveness of the lockdown.

There have been some baffling, confusing and disturbing things that I have read and seen over the past week or so. Some of them include:

• President Ramaphosa tweeting that had spoken to ‘his brother’ President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and reminded us that our two countries shared a deep historical bond based on friendship, solidarity and co-operation ( I should not be too perturbed since they say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer);
• Dr. Dlamini Zuma calling for “…more sacrifices and – if needs be – what Amilcar Cabral called  ‘class suicide’…” in her address at a media briefing on 25 April 2020 ( I quickly googled Amilcar Cabral and read some of his apparent work in which he refers to the triumph over the colonialists and then for the liberators to commit figurative suicide as a class to be reborn as revolutionary workers);
• Minister Lindiwe Zulu addressing the media whilst wearing either a beret with the Cuban flag emblazoned on it or the infamous red 5-pointed red star, which Che Guevara used to wear. Zulu has also been seen wearing military fatigues with similar epaulettes;
• The general secretaries of the ANC, SACP and Cosatu making a joint press statement stating inter alia, “…government should consider increasing publicly-held stakes in strategic sectors of the economy. The history of the Great Depression shows strategic intervention, including well-managed SOEs, have a crucial role to play in achieving economic turnarounds…”;
• Minister Pillay’s proclamations about what clothing we may and may not purchase during lockdown including the ban on the sale of T-shirts (unless used as undergarments) and open toe shoes;
• President Ramaphosa proclaiming “…the speedy implementation of economic reforms, and the transformation of our economy and embarking upon other steps that will ignite inclusive economic growth…”; and
• That the State of Disaster can continue indefinitely without limit ,seemingly at the discretion of the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs aka Dr Dlamini Zuma.

The above image of Lindiwe Zulu is courtesy of GCIS as found on Google

At this stage I made the mistake of reading Dr Anthea Jeffrey’s report “Keeping liberty alive through COVID-19 and beyond” published in April/May 2020. Terrifying stuff in that report, which I pray is not true, including:

• “…Health Minister Zweli Mkhize published a slide with some of the relevant numbers. According to this slide, the government expected 12-million Covid-19 cases without lockdown, but the number has now fallen to 8-million with lockdown in place. It expects 6-million people to be asymptomatic and 2-million people to fall ill. Assuming an infection fatality rate of 1%, it anticipates that 20 000 out of those 2-million people will die…”
• “…indicates that the ruling ANC/SACP alliance is determined to use the Covid-19 crisis to press ahead with the Soviet-inspired national democratic revolution (NDR) to which it has been committed since at least the 1960s. The alliance wants to use the crisis to weaken the private sector, build dependency on the government, introduce prescribed assets for pension funds and other financial institutions, induce the Reserve Bank to print money needed to maintain state spending, overcome resistance to the nationalization of private healthcare under the NHI, and open the way to the uncompensated expropriation of land and other assets…”

On my goodness, this is going to interrupt my sleep patterns. If Mkhize anticipated 20 000 deaths from COVID-19 in South Africa, why lockdown people (and the economy) for more than necessary to allow healthcare facilities and practitioners to be ready for the onslaught of the virus? By the way, 20 000 deaths from COVID-19 would be very good news since it is way less deadly than most global experts thought back in March 2020. In comparison, 18 837 passed away due to flu in 2017 and 25,336 from diabetes according to StatsSA.

I must profess to being naive about the NDR. I hastily purchased Frans Cronje’s new book “The rise or fall of South Africa” and read it from cover to cover. It is not yet available in hard copy in South Africa due to the shutdown of our printing presses during lockdown but is available in a Kindle version. For those of you who don’t know, Cronje is the CEO of the SA Institute of Race Relations (IRR). The book was drafted in 2019 so some parts of it are completely out of date given the impact of COVID-19 on our economy and the world in general. Other parts were interesting and others scary. I did hone in on this NDR thing and I quote from Cronje’s book:

“… The NDR’s objective is to shift the country’s economy from a predominantly free-market or capitalist one to a socialist and then communist one. This is to be achieved by slow and incremental steps and over a period of at least 40 years. NDR aims are often openly acknowledged in ANC and SACP documents, yet most South Africans have little or no knowledge of the revolution…because a transition to socialism would be difficult to achieve if South Africa’s free-market economy was thriving, if unemployment was low, and if most of people’s incomes and living standards were rising…a shift to socialism is far more likely to occur if joblessness is growing, inequality is worsening…many NDR interventions are therefore aimed at deterring investment, limiting growth, adding to unemployment, and bringing business under even greater state control…”

I must admit that back in December 2017 I thought some of the ANC decisions taken at its Nasrec national conference were a bit daft, but I was more interested in the presidential election outcome than the conference agenda items. With hindsight, the recommendations of expropriation of land without compensation, the speedy introduction of the NHI, the nationalization of the Reserve Bank and an investigation into how pension surpluses could be deployed for developmental purposes make a bit more sense given the ANC’s reported communist leanings.

I don’t easily buy into conspiracy theories. I believe our elected government has acted swiftly and decisively to address the COVID-19 pandemic and have been ably advised by esteemed experts such as Professors Karim, Gray and Madhi. Prolonging the lockdown and imposing sometimes petty and irrational measures such as 3-hour exercise windows, tobacco and alcohol bans, and curfews, is much more understandable given the views of the likes of Jeffreys and Cronje about the ANC’s desire to control everything.

Listen to the advice of healthcare professionals and the government about non-pharmaceutical interventions and be safe out there. All the best from BeechieB.

I have been reading a lot recently, some very good, some drivel and a whole lot in between. It’s day 36 of the lockdown and there are so many hours to fill. My routine is pretty similar daily except for today –  I was able to walk around the neighborhood for an hour before sneaking into my abode before 9am. The fellow runners and walkers I encountered were very friendly, respectfully greeting me along the way. I have never before felt or encountered such goodwill in suburbia (Johannesburg, anyway). Upon returning to my desktop and enjoying a brew of java, I listened to a fascinating Zoom recording on BusinessLive. The host, Michael Avery, was interviewing Ken Forrester, Wendy Appelbaum, Jeremy Sampson and Carrie Adams. In case you have no interest in wine, Forrester is a legend in the viticulture industry and his farm produces some excellent chenin blancs. Appelbaum, who is the late Sir Donald Gordon’s daughter, owns the DMZ wine farm. Her estate produced a global leading chardonnay in 2015, rated best in its category. Sampson is a well known marketing guru who understands the critical importance of branding. Adams is a shareholder in Norman Goodfellows, a well known liquor retailer in Johannesburg which has been around for over 100 years. Norman Goodfellows, bless its heart, has been delivering wine and other tickle to our doorsteps for the past 47 years (which must be an e-commerce record?). The topic of the Zoom meeting was the rather sensitive topic of the ANC ban on the transportation and sale of liquor since lockdown. I refer to the ‘ANC ban’ since this has no Cabinet oversight, but rather it is the decision of a cabal of 19 cabinet ministers and some director-generals.

I did not know until this morning that the liquor industry apparently accounts for ±5% of South Africa’s GDP, producing over 250 billion liters of alcohol annually. I also did not know that the industry employs over 600,000 people (the wine industry itself employs over 250,000 of these). This is no sideshow, this is a proper agricultural endeavor.

Wow, there was no mincing of words amongst the panelists. You can watch the recording should you be interested but let me share some quotes from the show:

“..they (read the government) have turned the wine industry into a zoo…the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing…”

“…the amount of money lost to the fiscus, at a time when the country desperately needs money, to fund what may become a humanitarian crisis, is unbelievably stupid…”

“… the government has put the entire country into forced rehab…”

“… we are the only country in the world to ban the sale of alcohol during a lockdown…”

“…the government has no faith in its electorate…”

“…our government has no idea how to run a business…”

I could almost feel the temperature rising in the Zoom room. The panelists claimed that the government had not consulted with the wine or liquor industry through its trade bodies prior to imposing prohibition. They also had no idea when and if, the liquor retail industry would reopen. Imagine trying to run a business with that lack of foresight. They lamented the lost opportunity of wine exports, particularly to the UK where wine sales are up 31% since lockdown began in that island empire. They failed to comprehend the ban on online liquor sales and the potential controls that could be put in place to trace alcohol purchases per individual. Avery ended the session and made reference to “death by a 1,000 regulations”.

Anyway, getting back to actual pandemic, I have been keeping myself busy with numbers and modeling. I hosted three free Excel training interventions this past week in order to give something back, market myself a bit and to distract myself from my empty wine fridge. I used the global numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths per country as the material to work with during the Excel training sessions. We do not know what the final health or economic outcomes of the virus and the lockdown in South Africa is going to be. So far, the health numbers look better than initially predicted. Professor Shabir Madhi of Wits reckons the COVID-19 fatalities in South Africa could be 45,000 over the next two years. The Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA) has been quoted as estimating the death toll at ±48,300. That’s not great news but it is nowhere near as devastating as the initial estimates of millions. The potential economic aftermath feels like a tsunami. Reports of job losses of between 3 million and 7 million according to National Treasury is terrifying. Watching video clips of queues for food parcels is heart wrenching.

The chart above depicts the estimated deaths per 100,000 per ASSA and Professor Madhi. I have taken the liberty of inserting the numbers of deaths per 100,000 in 2018/2019 from TB, diabetes, murders, HIV and from flu. In case you struggle with your eyesight, as some of us do, the number of deaths from COVID-19 is estimated by the aforementioned experts to be between 77 and 82 per 100,000. That is certainly higher than the 49 per 100,000 that died from TB and the 21,022 souls who were murdered in 2018/19. Moving away from morbidity to depressing stats. There are currently 13,530 people in South Africa per 100,000 that are HIV positive. There were 138 rapes per 100,000 and 291 cases per 100,000 of assault with the intention of doing grievous harm in 2018/19. We truly live in a troubled society.

According to a report by David Hemson this week, SAPS have charged 118,735 people in incidents relating to violations of COVID-19 regulations since lockdown. That is 202 people per 100,000 within a month as opposed to a year. My heavens, what is going on? The vast majority of cases appear to relate to ‘residential incidents’. I pray that the decline in ER cases reported at hospitals has not moved into domestic violence.

I find it useful to put numbers into perspective. Hopefully, a vaccine for COVID-19 will be found soon and then the above death statistics become non-recurring. Unfortunately, the carnage from murder, TB, diabetes and HIV will be with us for some time. The good news is that it appears that COVID-19 is not the killer pandemic initially thought. That is very good news which, I hope remains true or even improves. The very bad news is that our economy is in horrendous shape. It will take moral courage, incredible determination and unbelievable hard work to get out of the quagmire. Unfortunately, it will also require a capable state. Be safe out there. All the best from BeechieB.