EFF president Julius Malema has social media abuzz after he shared his thoughts on Level 5 lockdown in an interview with Newzroom Afrika‘s Xoli Mngambi, on Tuesday.
The opposition party’s commander-in-chief didn’t mince his words in conveying his distaste for the manner in which the government has managed things in this COVID-19 pandemic.
Malema sends warning shots on possible Level 5 lockdown
One of the crucial topics he lamented on pertained to reports of an impending Level 5 lockdown set to be announced by Cyril Ramaphosa, following a dramatic spike in COVID-19 infections.
Malema made it abundantly clear that in no way was he intending to abide by these harsh restrictions which, at Alert Level 5, render the country in a state of Martial law.
“We agreed to that from the beginning – we said, ‘let’s close the country’. We called for harsher lockdowns, we supported level 5, and we supported the president throughout. What happened in return? The president slept on his job – he didn’t do anything that is supposed to be done during lockdown,” Malema exclaimed.
Is South Africa going into harsher lockdown?
The EFF leader also confirmed that under no circumstance was his party’s anti-lockdown protest scheduled for Friday 25 June 2021 going to be called off.
The demonstrations which, at this time, have not been approved by a court of law, are an effort to challenge the government to act more decisively in dealing with setbacks in the country’s staggering vaccine rollout.
“From the handling of this vaccine program, it has been one mess after the other – and it is very clear that there is no program by government to vaccinate our people. We are not going to sit back and allow Cyril to gamble with the lives of our people. We are going to the streets and we will be there for some few hours,” he warned.
Malema’s comments came on the same day Cabinet members and scientists met to discuss the possibility of escalating restrictions to Level 4 or 5.
As reported by Business Day, the outcomes of this meeting, which includes expert consultations with leading scientists, will be on the agenda when Ramaphosa joins the symposium on Thursday 24 June 2021.
While the possibility of tighter restrictions is a matter the president will have to ponder, experts in healthcare have already noted their support for a higher Alert level.
South Medical Association (SAMA) chairperson chairperson Dr Angelique Coetzee warned the worst is yet to come if South Africa doesn’t act quick enough to ensure that people “stay at home as much as possible.”
“If you want a bed in Gauteng you are going to struggle so this is what we’re seeing and if we want to get out of this we need to make tough decisions. But it seems like it’s not going to happen so for now it is what it is and no one should be astonished if the numbers go up,” Dr Coetzee said.
At the time this article was published, these were the latest COVID-19 infection numbers, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
#COVID19 UPDATE: A total of 36,858 tests were conducted in the last 24 hrs, with 9,160 new cases, which represents a 24.9% positivity rate. A further 93 #COVID19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 58,795 to date. Read more: https://t.co/EFTmBkqEKw pic.twitter.com/OnutpYd4SF
— NICD (@nicd_sa) June 21, 2021