As we await the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines in SA, we must moderate our expectations. In the US, we have already seen long queues and people being turned back because states have not received sufficient doses from the federal government.
South Africans must not laugh at the chaos in the US, for we know that our own government is one of the most incompetent and corrupt in the world.
Their chaos notwithstanding, Americans have at least begun to vaccinate their people. Here in SA, not a single person has been vaccinated.
What the South African government knows best is to lie to the public by announcing big plans that never get implemented. Is there a plan that was ever implemented fully and successfully by President Cyril Ramaphosa?
We are told that the government plans to vaccinate 67% of our population by the end of 2021, the minimum required to attain herd immunity. For this, the government will need R20.6bn, and about R30bn to immunise the entire population.
The sad truth is that we know from experience that these promises will not materialise. Come December 31 2021, the traget will not have been reached.
We can foretell this because the so-called vaccination plan announced by Dr Zweli Mkhize is actually not a plan. It is a load of woolly propaganda. In the "plan", basic details are glaringly missing. We are given budget estimates, but we are not told where the government will source the money to buy the vaccines.
What we already know is that ANC comrades have stolen so much money that our government is now broke. How can the government promise to vaccinate us when it is broke and doesn’t know whence it will get money to buy vaccines?
Since the government doesn’t have money, it deliberately omitted another basic detail from its so-called vaccination plan: timelines.
Here is the truth: our government has not yet paid money to secure vaccines for 67% of our population. That is why the government can’t commit as to how many people will be vaccinated and by when. In simple terms, the government doesn’t know how many South Africans will have been vaccinated by June or October. How could they know when they have not yet paid?
For the past two weeks, the government has been trumpeting the arrival of the so-called “first batch” of vaccines, which is under 1.5-million doses. This is out of what the solidarity fund has paid through the global Covax facility, which, at best, will avail up to 10% of the populations of participating states, a figure that is far away from the 67% herd-immunity target.
In a country of about 60-million people, a million doses will go to a few lucky nurses and senior ANC thieves. Do not be surprised to learn that Comrade Ace Magashule has been declared “essential for societal functioning”, and therefore prioritised for vaccination.
The third missing detail from government’s so-called vaccination plan is an operational roadmap. If you are going to vaccinate the population, vaccination centres in specific townships, villages and suburbs must be identified. People must know where to go in their neighbourhood for vaccination. Indeed, an operational plan entails far more than vaccination centres; it is a complex logistical system involving transportation, storage, human resources, record keeping, etc.
Sadly, there is no such plan from our government. The reason is that the government is not sure if it will indeed vaccinate the people it "plans" to vaccinate.
Typical of the ANC, Ramaphosa has appointed a so-called co-ordinating committee on vaccines, chaired by a man all South African know cannot co-ordinate his own mind: DD Mabuza.
Some mischievous factionalists in the ANC are even insinuating that Ramaphosa deployed Comrade DD to the committee not to coordinate anything, but to expose the sickly comrade to the virus. Such conspiracy theories do not assist us ordinary South Africans.
For us, the most important question is: What is to be done?
In other words, South Africans must ask themselves: Given the known incompetence and mendacity of our government, what will we do to secure vaccines for ourselves?
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