Fourth Covid-19 wave warning for South Africa
Wits University vaccinology professor Shabir Madhi told the Sunday Times that the campaigning period ahead of 1 November’s local elections could cause numerous superspreader events.
Madhi said campaigning will be “the riskiest period with regard to possible superspreader events, particularly if electioneering is allowed to take place in poorly ventilated indoor places.”
He said that this is likely to be the case irrespective of the number of people who are allowed into these places.
UCT health-focused historian Mandisa Mbali added that Covid-19 is not the top priority for many, which may lead to risky compromises.
“For many poor and working-class South Africans, other issues threatening their health may be of much greater immediate priority,” said Mbali.
“Many will be willing to meet with political leaders to share their desire to lead a dignified life, free from poverty.”
The DA’s Siviwe Gwarube argued that South Africa risks repeating the mistakes made by India in March and April.
“They had elections and immediately after that they were dealing with an unprecedented number of infections,” said Gwarube.
“It’s selfish and short-sighted for political parties to put people’s lives in danger in that way.”
However, Madhi believes that the subsiding third wave, increased community immunity, and rollout of vaccines could lessen the blow of these superspreader events to a degree.
“Consequently, it is unlikely that we will experience an overwhelming of health services, although unnecessary loss of life from Covid is still a reality if there is irresponsible behaviour by political parties and their supporters,” said Madhi.
South Africa’s local elections have already met their first stumbling block — an outage of voter information systems during the only voter registration weekend held ahead of the upcoming local government elections.
Several citizens who were trying to register on the IEC’s voter registration website struggled to complete the process.
Those who tried to use the website instead received error messages.
The IEC identified the issues affecting its website and fixed it the same day.
A problem involving the system’s mapping functionality also affected new voter management devices (VMDs), and these were also fixed later that day.
These VMDs were being tested for the first time at scale, and represent an upgrade over the previous machines — which had been in use since 1998.
These devices are essentially tablets that make it easy to register your identity documents at the appropriate voting station.
VMDs also aim to make it easy for volunteers to check and update voter information if they are already registered.
The IEC will use these devices on voting day to verify their details and admit them into the voting station.
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