The racialisation of the #Covid19 debate is deflecting attention away from the genuinely alarming extent to which the current implementation of #lockdown is becoming counterproductive and damaging. 1/

Genuine concerns about the rationality or effectiveness of lockdown members tend all too easily be dismissed as emanating from privilege or failure to take the pandemic seriously 2/

One early example was the way the debate about cooked food was framed as being about Woolies chicken for the privileged. No one seemed to pay attention to the fact that street food is an essential part of the township economy - and needed by essential workers 3/

Over and over, irrational or poorly thought out regulations - the prohibitions on alcohol, on tobacco, on exercise - have been defended in patronising terms, performed as chastisements of privilege, and the enforcement of disciplinary relations between state and subject 4/

The strangest part of this discourse is the way it unfolds in terms of a political imaginary of hyperdevelopment. As if we are indeed living in the Singapore- analog that Zille and her cronies imagine SA to be. 5/

Regulations are proposed and defended that require a highly effective state and a disciplined and trusting populace. But we do not have those. We have a weak, dysfunctional state and an unruly, vulnerable, distrustful population. The results are have been disastrous 6/

Lockdown measures have been promulgated that are doing enormous economic harm, PARTICULARLY to the poorest and most vulnerable groupings, while relief and aid measures are shambolic and inadequate 7/

Significant resources are being spent policing prohibitions that have no biomedical justification, while government either allows congregations that encourage spread (funerals) or actually creates them (queues for food and social grants) 8/

Early indications are that attempts to contain the pandemic have failed. We have an uncontained outbreak in Cape Town, and the dreadful state of health systems in the Eastern Cape and elsewhere mean that all the other numbers are highly likely to be misleading. 9/

Yet much of the discussion I have seen (on this website at least) concerns the idiotic utterances of a few frustrated surfers and discussions of whether the DA leader should stay in his lane. Those are distractions. We need to focus on the real issues. We're in trouble. /ends