RUSSEL BRAND – SA GOVERNMENT AND PANDEMIC

We have a government that has been stripping capacity for many years, through poor decisions, through poor institutional governance and so our capacity to deal with complex challenges was already limited. Now we are still in that very localized mindset with global challenges that are washing over us like a tsunami. Because we are down here in the south, we tend to get very embroiled in our own local dramas, I don’t think we saw a lot of those waves coming and to a certain extent they nullify a lot of our local soap opera over here because they involve forces that are of such a massive nature, that they just mean that we are less prepared obviously for major global impacts coming our way. So I think government has taken a very predictable route of following how many other governments have gone and using the impetus of the pandemic, and I like to say, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, of driving extremely authoritarian measures of using a lot more ICT enabled surveillance. Our privacy has never been encroached upon more than it is right now, and with the rallying call of this apparent uniquely threatening pandemic, justifying this erosion of all our human rights.