The physical distancing measures announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 15 March followed by an extended lockdown may have bought us time to prepare for Covid-19. Good leadership has helped the response, but the current lockdown is not sustainable.

Clem Sunter is a scenario planner and strategist whose influential ideas in the 1980s played into apartheid South Africa opting for the High Road of political settlement, rather than the Low Road of confrontation and civil war.

Hunger is driving poor South Africans into maize fields to pilfer mealies in what industry group Grain SA says are growing numbers. Many are children. Things are that bad.

While it is early to make a definitive assessment, one can argue that South Africa’s agricultural sector has been relatively more insulated from the Covid-19 pandemic than other sectors of the economy that are on complete lockdown.

If there is just one outcome from the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa that could be considered positive, it is this: for perhaps the first time, the reality of household hunger and malnutrition has become visible to policymakers. 

COVID-19 has caused widespread turmoil and volatility since the start of 2020 and the measures implemented to contain it have sent shockwaves throughout the global economy.