President Cyril Ramaphosa inspired some levels of hope when he announced the country’s first consignment of Covid-19 vaccines. This consignment consists of one million doses produced by Serum Institute of India, which arrived in OR Tambo International Airport last week.
The easing of lockdown level 3 restrictions were justified primarily by the arrival of this first consignment which will see all healthcare workers, essential workers, people over 60 years and people with comorbidities taking their first jab of the vaccines. The easing of lockdown restrictions was necessary as pressure was mounting on the government as SA Brewery had laid off 550 temporary workers as well as a huge divestment of more than R2bn.
Although Covid-19 vaccines are not mandatory in Israel, the small country which has the equal size of land as our Kruger National Park, with about nine million population, has experienced more Israelis taking part in what the media referred to as the world’s leading vaccination programme.
Israel has vaccinated more than a million of its population with two doses. After receiving a single dose, then a second dose has to be injected in about three weeks after the first one.
Ramaphosa has assured South Africans in his recent national address that the vaccines would not be forced against the will of those who do not want to take part. South Africans would have to take lessons from Israel and its people by taking part in this important chapter to slow down the infection rate, mortalities and hospitalisation.
SA Zionist Federation (SAZF) national chairperson Rowan Polovin said that the Israelis were not forced to take the vaccine jabs, “the programme in Israel is not mandatory, but the vast majority of Israelis have realised the importance of vaccinating, and the Israel health ministry ran educational programmes and campaigns in this regard”.
Propaganda, conspiracy theories and misinformation have been peddled by armchair critics who are not contributing a single solution to the quagmire faced by the world about this deadly and contagious coronavirus. These lies are meant to scare people from taking part in the vaccination programme, and further misleads the population that the virus does not exist by linking it with the 5G technology which has got nothing to do with coronavirus.
South Africans are bolder than this cheap propaganda and they will rise above any pettiness. The government should do what it did in the 1990s on running two successful educational campaigns on democracy and HIV-Aids.
One of the most successful campaigns to ever be run by the South African government was Khululeka, which featured the late iconic Joe Mafela. The intention at the time was to teach people about new concepts such as democracy, rights, elections and others. The campaign was launched after the historic launch of the country’s constitution in 1996, which took place in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg.
Who can forget Soul City which had the legendary Lillian Dube as its face? The Soul City project can be argued to be the most success stories in SA, people started to change their behaviour towards their sexual lifestyles in a bid to protect themselves from HIV-Aids. From Soul City, people learnt much about HIV-Aids which was a deadly virus at the time because there were no anti-retroviral.
Like the government did in the 1990s with Khululeka and Soul City, why is our government, through the arts and culture ministry, not launching a massive campaign on coronavirus to teach people more about the disease and ways to combat it? The government is allowing misinformation to rule the street as people have nowhere to look for information.
Arts and culture ministry should assemble the country’s artists and start a campaign which will work against what they call conspiracy theories. Social media is doing more harm than good as irresponsible people peddle lies. This campaign will also assist those artists who have not been getting gigs to make money in this difficult period.
SA, like Israel, should place life at its highest value and be as creative and practical as possible in funding ways out of our budget and resources to invest in vaccines that will save lives and inject life back into our economy. We all have seen how this virus has hit the world’s economy and healthcare system too.
Chairperson of an NGO called Africa for Peace, Klaas Mokgomole, said that SA should take some lessons from Israel by investing in the youth. “South Africa can learn that investing in the country’s youth will benefit the country in a later stage. Investing in the education system will produce inventors who will come with solutions. The educational curricula needs to be relevant, of higher quality, decolonised and up to date,” said Mokgomole.
• Mokgatlhe is a political and social commentator
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