The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how humanity rallies together in times of suffering, but it has also highlighted awful greed, crass opportunism and the selfish human heart.
All praise, glory and honour to Gift of the Givers, the largest disaster relief organisation on the African continent, for jumping into the Covid-19 appeal. Religious leaders are eager to meet the president in the stand against the virus but in supporting the closure of all services did they make their churches, temples, mosques, synagogues available to help the homeless?
This is not their mission. The same hypocrisy is true of shoppers. Over the past week panic-buying has resulted in shop-shelves emptying out because individuals purchased bulk items without a care for fellow man.
So much for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Rainbow Nation. What rainbow? While shopping to get a microwave after the household faithful gave up the ghost on Tuesday, I found one in Pick n Pay on special and pushing the trolley along came across a table with specials sardines and soup marked down.
When a woman saw what I was staring at pounced, grabbing a few of the tins, just what the Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni ordered. There was plenty for both of us. Mboweni recently showed his tinned fish curry on
twitter.
Hope this is not our staple diet following the Moody’s downgrade which saw Mboweni on twitter again: “We shall overcome.” Not in my lifetime, it seems we are doomed, Mr Minister. I hate tinned fish without boiled eggs.
Your curry looks like it need some chillies. Ultimately, we are paying the price for accepting who we vote for. Coronavirus has stolen the thunder from the awful nine-year Jacob Zuma reign with looting a hallmark of his rule.
The Zondo Commission has heard harrowing accounts of how government coffers were pilfered by various individuals but they’re far away from rocking orange outfits. President Cyril Ramaphosa has been praised for action on Covid-19. Social media tells you that I am not alone in thanking God that we have him as our leader during this crisis and not his predecessor who would have been bumbling along, fudging the figures and when all else fails, laughing as if mocking our nation.
Selfishness and greed are a human quality but no more prevalent has this been than the former president’s scaly friends, the Guptas. They’ve skipped the country but not yet in jail. The country’s top prosecutor Shamila Batohi came in guns blazing more than a year ago but fizzled swiftly.
Selfish South Africans on the Covid-19 buying and selling spree are symptomatic of the sick psyche of our nation.
This sickness afflicts us all. The stockpiling was reminiscent of the pattern in the run up to democratic elections when people did the same. How long did that last?
Have we not learned? Our beloved South Africa has grown into a selfish nation, pretty much like what we experienced in terms of leadership during those horrible nine years Covid-19 has made us forget.