Covid is salt in South Africa’s wounds

Pandemics don’t cause riots. They do, though, create the perfect conditions for turmoil in fragile societies that are already powder kegs of inequality and sky-high unemployment, and where coronavirus has inevitably hit the poor hardest. South Africa’s days of unrest this month, the worst violence since apartheid, were triggered
by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma on contempt-of-court charges. The financial pain caused by Covid-19 was dry kindling and fuel.
After mayhem that left more than 200 people dead, shattered storefronts are now at last being swept up. But the social and economic damage caused by the pandemic is not over, and the unseen damage behind the anger of recent days, from malnutrition to surging school dropout rates, will hamper the cash-strapped country’s longer-term convalescence. It’s a crisis that can also compel the government, business leaders and civil society to fill some of the gaps Covid-19 has widened.
On a continent that initially appeared to escape the worst of the pandemic, South Africa too started off well enough. It had time to prepare, the government quickly imposed restrictions when the first cases did turn up and the healthcare system withstood the pressure. Subsequent waves, though, have been deadlier. The country last week was grappling with both rioting protesters and a third wave of infections, fed by public exhaustion and more infectious strains.
The human toll has been high. South Africa’s confirmed Covid-19 cases now stand at 2.3 million, the continent’s highest number by far, in part because of a larger number of diagnoses. Official figures put deaths at more than 67,000, though excess mortality data — seen as a more accurate measure of the real impact — suggest a figure that could be nearly three times that. Part of the problem is that South Africa’s vaccination campaign has been bumpy. Supply issues have eased and the government is urgently trying to hit a rate of 300,000 a day, but it has still fully vaccinated only 3% of a 60 million-strong population — nowhere near enough to blunt the surge’s impact.

—Bloomberg