Failing to pull together: South Africa’s troubled response to COVID-19

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to provide a country case study of South Africa’s response during the first six months following its first COVID-19 case. The focus is on the government’s (mis-)management of its non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) (or “lockdown”) to stem the pandemic and the organized business sector’s resistance against the lockdown. Design/methodology/approach This paper makes use of a literature review and provides descriptive statistics and quantitative analysis of COVID-19 and the lockdown stringency in South Africa, based on data from Google Mobility Trends, Oxford University’s Stringency Index, Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker and Our World in Data. Findings This paper finds that both the government and the business sector’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been problematic. These key actors have been failing to “pull together,” leaving South Africa’s citizens in-between corrupt and incompetent officials on the one hand, and lockdown skeptics on the other. This paper argues that to break through this impasse, the country should change direction by agreeing on a smart or “Goldilocks” lockdown, based on data, testing, decentralization, demographics and appropriate economic support measures, including export support. Such a Goldilocks lockdown is argued, based on available evidence from the emerging scientific literature, to be able to save lives, improve trust in government, limit economic damages and moreover improve the country’s long-term recovery prospects. Research limitations/implications The pandemic is an unprecedented crisis and moreover was still unfolding at the time of writing. This has two implications. First, precise data on the economic impact and certain epidemiological parameters was not (yet) available. Second, the causes of the mismanagement by the government are not clear yet, within such a short time frame. More research and better data may be able in future to allow conclusions to be drawn whether the problems that were besetting the country’s management of COVID-19 are unique or perhaps part of a more general problem across developing countries. Practical implications The paper provides clear practical implications for both government and organized business. The South African Government should not altogether end its lockdown measures, but follow a smart and flexible lockdown. The organized business sector should abandon its calls for ending the lockdown while the country is still among the most affected countries in the world, and no vaccine is available. Social implications There should be better collaboration between government, business and civil society to manage a smart lockdown. Government should re-establish lost trust because of the mismanagement of the lockdown during the first six months of the pandemic. Originality/value The outline of the smart lockdown that is proposed for the country combines NPIs with the promotion of exports, as a policy intervention to help aggregate demand to recover. The paper provides advice on how to resolve an impasse created by mismanagement of COVID-19, which could be valuable for decision-making during a crisis, particularly in developing countries.

The lived experiences of Tuberculosis survivors during the COVID-19 pandemic and government lockdown in South Africa: a qualitative analysis

“…Participants were identi ed through purposive sampling. Participants included TB survivors enrolled in the larger TB study at a major public hospital in Johannesburg [39], who had successfully completed TB treatment in the past two years and who had experienced the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, as COVID-19 survivors, as caregivers for loved ones with COVID-19, or as residents experiencing the lockdown imposed by the South African government [40][41][42]. Participants with moderate-to-severe baseline scores on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) [43,44] were prioritized, as were participants with diagnosed cases of COVID.…”

Guest editorial

“…The topics that the authors highlight include the efficiency and drawbacks of national responses to the pandemic. Here, the cases of South Africa and South Korea offer an interesting and contrasting view of ways in which "failing to pull together" (Naudé and Cameron, 2021) and "whole community coproduction" (Yeo and Lee, 2020) may yield strikingly different results. The cases of Kazakhstan (Bokayev et al, 2021) and of the USA (Johnson et al, 2021) will allow the reader to understand the caveats of the government response to the crisis as viewed from the perspective of education systems and the necessity to switch to distance education (Visvizi et al, 2020;Visvizi and Daniela, 2019).…”

“…The following group of papers addresses the national-level responses to the crisis. Naudé and Cameron (2021) examine South Africa's response to COVID-19. The authors argue that both the government and the business sector's responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been problematic.…”

“…The papers included in this Special Issue may be divided into two groups, i.e. papers dealing with broad, overarching issues relating to the process of managing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including democracy and accountability (Parry et al, 2020) as well as regulatory issues (Sokołowski, 2020); papers elaborating on national case studies, including the cases of South Africa (Naudé and Cameron, 2021), Botswana (Mandiyanike and Moeti, 2021), South Korea (Yeo and Lee, 2020), Indonesia (Hartanto and Siregar, 2021), Kazakhstan (Bokayev et al, 2021) and the USA (Johnson et al, 2021). The topics that the authors highlight include the efficiency and drawbacks of national responses to the pandemic.…”

Data deprivations, data gaps and digital divides: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

“…That the success of data-intensive technologies would benefit from decentralised gathering and use rather than top-down, centralised approaches due to being able to garner more trust was also emphasised by Sandvik (2020: 7) in the case of the Norwegian ‘Smittestopp’ app, and by Naudé and Cameron (2021) in the case of South Africa. A wide range of data modalities have been combined to develop innovative strategies aimed at containing COVID-19 spread.…”