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SOUTH AFRICA: Nicky Barber reveals how COVID has fuelled the perfect storm ravaging her people

In this special series ordinary people across the world share stories of their struggle to survive in a pandemic world. Late in 2019, a mysterious illness emerged at a seafood and poultry market in the sprawling capital of Central China’s Hubei province. The growing outbreak was reported to the World Health Organisation on December 31, which confirmed a novel coronavirus was the cause of the respiratory illness in a cluster of people on January 12, 2020. On March 3 a 38-year-old man who had returned from Italy with his wife visited a doctor after developing a fever, headache, malaise, a sore throat and a cough. Swabs were taken and two days later he was the first officially confirmed COVID-19 case in South Africa. President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster on March 15 and implemented immediate measures to control the potential outbreak. Two days later the National Coronavirus Command Council was established “to lead the nation’s plan to contain the spread and mitigate the negative impact of the coronavirus”. The first COVID death was reported on March 27 and a national lockdown that would become one of the most stringent in the world commenced. Not only was outdoor exercise banned during lockdown, but tobacco and alcohol sales were also prohibited — the latter of which was banned to limit alcohol-related trauma absorbing hospital resources. By September restrictions had relaxed to the lowest category — level 1. President Ramaphosa said the country had “withstood the storm” in its fight against COVID. But a second wave hit in December and restrictions were tightened again, relaxing only in March shortly after the national vaccination program was officially rolled out. In May 2021 a third wave swept South Africa, dominated by the new Delta variant. Doctors in Johannesburg reported hospitals had passed beyond breaking point, with insufficient beds and oxygen supplies to care for sick patients. Since then the country has gradually eased restrictions. However, the toll the pandemic had taken on health services was abundantly clear. Data from the South African Medical Research Council revealed there had been 261,758 excess deaths from natural causes in the period from May 3, 2020 to September 25, 2021. According to the World Health Organisation: “Excess mortality is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. COVID-19 excess mortality accounts for both the total number of deaths directly attributed to the virus as well as the indirect impact, such as disruption to essential health services or travel disruptions.” The report showed that while 85-95 per cent of the excess deaths recorded were attributable to COVID, the remaining 5-15 per cent were likely a result of overwhelmed health services. Of Africa’s 54 countries South Africa is one of just nine to have met WHO’s target to fully vaccinate 10 per cent of the population by October, with Johns Hopkins University reporting 15 per cent of its 60 million people have been double-jabbed. Despite promises made as part of the Covax global vaccine-sharing initiative, dose hoarding by wealthy countries has meant the continent has suffered from shortages. When vaccines have been made available in Africa, the pattern has been repeated with countries with more advanced economies such as South Africa receiving the lion’s share of the doses. On October 1 South Africa launched a fresh initiative in a bid to revive its lethargic inoculation drive in an attempt to meet its goal to fully vaccinate 70 per cent of adults by the end of this year. Despite its relative wealth and vaccination rate, South Africa is the continent’s worst-affected country. Almost 88,000 people have died from COVID, with the country’s death toll exceeding 40 per cent of all reported deaths across the whole of Africa. South Africa also has some of the highest prevalence of HIV and tuberculosis in the world, making the percentage of its population suffering vulnerability to COVID particularly concerning. Further adding fuel to the COVID crisis in South Africa is a government fraught with corruption scandals and the social unrest surrounding them. The arrest of Jacob Zuma on July 7 after the former president failed to give evidence on a corruption inquiry sparked an overflow of tensions in South Africa considered to be the deadliest period since the end of Apartheid in 1994. Riots spilled into the streets, with the nation suffering the loss of at least 337 lives to violence over the span of five days of rampaging and looting. Investigations related to the misuse of funds under the guise of COVID-relief have also been ongoing. Late last month the country’s Special Investigating Unit released a report that found former South African health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize guilty of the misuse of funds awarded for a COVID communication contract with media company Digital Vibes worth about $10 million Rand (AUD 14 million). A digital marketing specialist reveals how low vaccination rates, high infections, a struggling health system, political corruption and civil unrest have combined to create a perfect storm for South Africans bracing for the fourth wave. NICKY BARBER, 37, DIGITAL MARKETING SPECIALIST, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA ‘My marriage fell apart when COVID hit’ I officially split up with my ex-husband in 2019. I was living in London at the time and came back to South Africa because I struggled to find a job there. It took a couple of months to get back on my feet, but my old employer found out I was back in South Africa and got me on board. Things were good so I moved out of my parents’ house and into my own cottage. Two nights later the pandemic hit and within a week my contract had been terminated. Every single contracted employee with that company was terminated. My contract had involved a huge retailer that had been having financial difficulties and COVID was the nail in the coffin for them. They had a conference call with all of their suppliers and said “guys, we don’t know how we’re going to pay you, we actually have no money”. It was worth multi, multi-million Rand overall in agreements with suppliers. Then the president announced the lockdown. I think it was three weeks to start and we didn’t think it would go on beyond that time period. My then-boyfriend and I went to stay with his father because we didn’t want him to be by himself. I let my landlords know I couldn’t afford my rent. I wasn’t the only person in this position. People were losing jobs left, right and centre. Even my landlords had been put on forced leave or informed they wouldn’t be able to earn a full salary. Financial turmoil was everywhere, like a domino effect destroying everybody’s lives. ‘I’ve been lucky to survive, others haven’t’ My ex-boyfriend was lucky to still have a job. He’s an aeronautical engineer so he was fine. I was staying with him and his dad at the family home so I had a roof over my head. I’m in digital marketing, but I’ve also got a side business that started off as a personal blog when I was living in Shanghai some years ago and kept going after my ex-husband and I moved to London. Within two weeks of going into lockdown I decided to self-publish a digital recipe book because everyone was at home cooking and baking. That’s what Delicious Monster is about — food and stories. I thought, why not start sharing my recipes? So I put the recipe book together and sold it online. I made a fair amount of money which was a little nest egg I could survive off for the next few months. It’s weird. At first, I was in an absolute state but just put my head down and worked really hard to get Delicious Monster going again to turn it more into a business. From there I’ve built up a good client base. Now I’ve got a full-time job. I started that on the first of July, but I had looked for a while and was very lucky. I know people who’ve been looking for jobs for over a year since they lost them when the pandemic hit. ‘Traditional healers are spreading anti-vax messages’ We are really good about isolating. We’ve been ordering a lot of groceries online, avoiding the shops, and have only been seeing a very small amount of people we can trust. Luckily I have not lost anybody within my immediate family or my extended family to the virus. A few people have gotten sick, but they haven’t ended up in hospital. The only person was one of my second cousins, and she’s an anti-vaxxer. She still refuses to get vaccinated even though she was in hospital for two weeks. I choose not to interact with her. The vaccinated numbers in South Africa are low in comparison to the rest of the world. Rural communities in South Africa don’t really have an option. If you’ve got a family of 10 people living in a shack — like a shanty home — you can’t isolate, you can’t socially distance. It’s not part of the culture. You’ve got these communities of people that are very close together. So that’s why I think things spread so quickly. Those communities also don’t believe in being vaccinated. There’s a terrible stigma around it. A lot of traditional medicine healers and religious groups are spreading the anti-vax message and it’s been working. ‘Alcohol and cigarettes were banned’ During the hard lockdown we were in level five and weren’t allowed to leave our house. That was hectic, but then they started opening up and allowed 50 people at funerals and allowed people to go to religious gatherings. I’m not a very religious person, but was thinking why would you still allow those things? Because that’s where people were getting sick. They were going to funerals of people who had died from COVID and then were getting COVID. I know people who have gone to weddings and gotten COVID. I think the Government was very careful and strategic about not stopping people from being able to participate in religious gatherings because they know a large percentage of their voter base are religious and that is a very important thing to them. Within the black communities especially it’s very important to bury somebody. There is a ceremony that usually involves the slaughtering of an animal. It’s a big thing. So they couldn’t stop people from moving around. During the religious periods there’s a lot of travel and that’s when the virus spreads. Last December we were put into a harder lockdown. They closed public spaces, they closed features and there was a ban on alcohol sales. That’s been one of the biggest things throughout this entire thing. Firstly, it was the ban on cigarette sales. But then people were basically bootlegging — selling cigarettes on the black market. There were rumours of somebody very high up in the African National Congress — the ruling party — being involved in selling illegal cigarettes. And then they banned the sale of alcohol. I’ve got friends who work in government hospitals who say alcohol has been a massive catalyst for complete devastation. So people were selling alcohol on the black market and making pineapple beer at home. But people were getting sick from their homemade alcohol and some even died. When the booze ban happened the emergency rooms were a lot less busy because there were fewer road accidents, fewer domestic abuse cases, fewer stabbings. Violent crimes went down. When they opened up sales again we saw another spike. The ERs were busy again. You could not win. It was hectic. It feels like 10 years ago and was only like 18 months ago. ‘I watched people loot a bloodbank’ I make a point not to consume a hell of a lot of news because it bogs me down, but there’s a lot going on in South Africa at the moment. The political situation has always been stressful. I don’t think that’s going away any time soon. A few months ago when Jacob Zuma was finally arrested it caused a massive s...storm. It was absolute chaos. It was civil war. If you would have shown me the footage and told me it was a warzone I would have believed you. People were defending their own properties with guns because the army and police were not there. I watched people live on television loot a bloodbank. It was here in Joburg, but the worst was in KwaZulu-Natal on the coast which is where Jacob Zuma’s home is and he’s got a hell of a lot more followers down there. That was an attempt to destabilise the Government. We’ve got elections coming up on the first of November and there’s been scandal surrounding that too. There’s a lot of friction and cracks within the African National Congress which is having a knock-on effect on everything else. The ANC is basically bankrupt. There have been people within the ANC who have been stealing money and now they’re bankrupt. The only thing we can do is all vote. This election is not national, but provincial so it will impact neighbourhoods and provinces. And certain wards. I don’t know how many people have registered to vote. It’s not compulsory, but if you don’t vote you can’t moan about things. You actually have no right because you’re not part of changing things. I’m in Johannesburg but I grew up in Cape Town, so I grew up in a province that was mostly run by the opposition party — the Democratic Alliance. When you go down to Cape Town you see the difference. In Joburg, you’ve got potholes and the infrastructure’s bad, things are unkempt and there’s more crime. You can see the difference between a DA province and an ANC province. The ANC actually failed to register its candidates for the election. They missed the deadline. According to law, if you don’t register by a certain time, then you’re not included on the ballot. That’s my understanding. But they were given a hospital pass and allowed to register late anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if they rig the election. ‘Anxiety levels are extremely high’ Once Delta came out a lot more people I know got COVID and a lot more people were dying. In the thick of it, there were problems getting hospital beds. People were being turned away. I’ve got a friend whose mum was recovering from cancer and she got COVID so they had to take her to the hospital. She was obviously immunocompromised as well. He said there was a queue of ambulances outside the hospital waiting to get people in. So you didn’t want to get yourself in a situation where you might be injured by something other than COVID such as a car accident or a fall or for any reason because you’d have to go to a number of different hospitals to see which had space for you. The hospitals were also running out of oxygen. There was a lot of controversy, as in the beginning the motivation for putting everyone on such a hard lockdown was to get the health system ready for what was coming. Because they were not ready. Then we were taken out of lockdown and the hospitals still weren’t ready, so we were put back into lockdown. What was actually going on during that time? There’s been so much more corruption and thievery under the guise of COVID, such as corrupt tenders for personal protective equipment. There’s been so much death, and there’s been so much loss. Anxiety levels at the moment are extremely high. Everyone needs a break. We’re all exhausted. ‘Gender-based violence increased during COVID’ Gender-based violence is a big problem in South Africa, particularly during COVID. I am always worried about my safety. Always. I constantly have to be on the lookout for danger. Is someone following me when I walk? Is someone driving right behind me? Driving at night is terrifying. I go straight through red lights because I don’t want to stop. I know people who have been driving in broad daylight and they get a knock on the window and there’s someone standing outside their car with a gun. Especially being a single woman I have to take security into consideration when I find a new place. Is there an electric fence? What floor is it on? Will I wake up with somebody in my home? We’ve had robberies. I’ve woken up at 4am to people smashing through the doors using a boulder from the garden to steal the TV. There was a strong chance I could have been murdered that night. It was horrific. I suffered PTSD afterwards. ‘We’ll get through this’ I’ve become very jaded about South Africa and the Government. I feel like nothing will change. I’ll go and vote and speak out against it and I’ll be vocal about my opinions, but when you’ve got a Government as corrupt as ours is I don’t see any big changes happening anytime soon. A typical South African thing to say is: “What if the same thing happens to us that happened in Zimbabwe?” Our state-owned enterprises are not being looked after. For example, we have load shedding. We have our power turned off when we are in load-shedding mode for four hours a day, sometimes twice a day. Sometimes the substation blows up because it hasn’t been maintained properly. So then your power goes off you haven’t got electricity for six hours. Sometimes people’s water gets turned off. People can’t run their businesses when there’s no power and then you don’t have connectivity if the cell towers go down. It’s tough because you’re dealing with a pandemic, and you are dealing with family stuff, and you are worried about your work, and then you don’t have power for four hours and it’s another thing to stress out about. I need to stress that this is my life and I’m a privileged South African who doesn’t have nearly as many problems in comparison to the average person in the country. There are some people who live in areas that don’t even have running water. The elections come around and people do their campaigning and promise service delivery and then never deliver. So then you’ve got service delivery protests so people burn tyres in the streets and there’s violence. I’ve painted a very bleak picture of South Africa but things are not great at the moment. And we will have a fourth COVID wave. It will probably be around November or December. But I’m not as stressed about the virus anymore because my family and friends are all fully vaccinated, so we’re all on the road to protecting ourselves. I don’t want anyone to get sick and I would obviously stress about it, but it doesn’t cause me as much anxiety as it used to. Once a lot more people are vaccinated we can open up again and live a “normal” life again. One amazing thing that’s come out of the pandemic and South Africa is our e-commerce industry has boomed. There’s been so much growth in so many areas with people starting their own businesses. I think that’s really expedited growth within the country because people realise they really needed to get online. The turnaround was insane. South Africans are very resilient. And we are a very strong nation. We have dealt with a lot and we do adapt and thrive. We’ll get through this. WHO OFFICIAL STATISTICS (AS AT OCTOBER 6, 2021) SOUTH AFRICA GLOBAL

exclusiveSOUTH AFRICA: Nicky Barber reveals how COVID has fuelled the perfect storm ravaging her people

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SOUTH AFRICA: Nicky Barber reveals how COVID has fuelled the perfect storm ravaging her people