Townships lag behind call to lock down

KwaZulu-Natal’s townships are not adhering to national lockdown rules and, while the Durban city centre is perhaps the least littered it has been in decades, the homeless and beggars still pepper street corners, hustling to make a buck.

Beggars Ali and Bongani were trying to ply their “trade” early on Saturday morning when City Press visited the notoriously filthy and overcrowded Warwick Avenue taxi rank, a literal shell of its former self because of the anxiety – and policing – brought about by the country’s Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown.

“Only R5, R5 only, please,” said Ali, grinning broadly and waving a grubby, facemask at passers-by. “I got them there, the medical centre, that hospital place,” he said when asked where he found the items. Ali refused to elaborate, but he did twirl in intoxicated glee and, with Bongani, started chanting “corona, corona” to potential customers.

Durban has come to what would be considered a standstill under normal circumstances.

Every shop visited on Saturday had security guards at the entrance spraying hands with sanitiser; one particularly astute guard sprayed and wiped trolleys, gloved hands and the hands of customers.

Each shop had several customers masked and gloved, many looking decidedly harried and tense. “There, stand there,” a woman shopper hissed at a man who was standing too close to her.

A teller whispered to City Press that she was not wearing a mask or gloves because “the boss thinks it will make people panic and they won’t come to shop”.

At one retail chain, a manager stood at the door, laughing nervously. “They just didn’t come to work, they just didn’t pitch,” he said of his staff.

Amid the tension, Durban’s beaches looked beautiful. The sand was sparkling golden and the sea glistening – even if an appreciative audience was lacking.

The security guards and police manning the popular Golden Mile were many but, truth be told, the guards looked nervous, with the police taking a more “business as usual” stance.

A massive group of the city’s notoriously plump and cheeky pigeons had gathered just metres from beachfront-based Addington Hospital, one of the province’s designated Covid-19 treatment facilities. The pigeons rushed to the few officers and gathered outside cars, close enough to touch, demanding the scraps usually freely available from beachgoers.

“People in the city centre have been good. I would say there has been a relatively high rate of compliance [with lockdown stipulations],” Road Traffic Inspectorate provincial spokesperson Zinhle Mngomezulu said.

“The roads were very quiet on Friday, more quiet than usual. On Thursday, the traffic was too much. At Mariannhill Toll Plaza and Mtunzini [toll plaza] in the afternoon we counted 2 000 vehicles an hour inbound.

“People were complaining, asking why more boom gates had not been opened.

“Driver behaviour, though, has been excellent. But around townships the compliance is about 50%. I would rate it 70% in the CBD,” Mngomezulu said.

While most people were complying with lockdown rules, Premier Sihle Zikalala said on Friday there were “people in the townships who this morning flooded shopping malls and are engaging in panic buying. This has prompted us to set up roadblocks as part of interventions. Large numbers of vehicles were turned back.”

Zikalala said 24 people had been arrested for violating regulations “and for attempted murder”.

The attempted murder charges related to a Ladysmith businessperson who had been overseas and tested positive for Covid-19 but refused to self-quarantine. Police said he was estimated to have come into contact with at least 30 people.

The second case was a tourist who tested positive at Kruger National Park and was ordered to self-quarantine. He instead travelled to Saint Lucia, interacting with an unknown number of people.

An eThekwini-based healthcare practitioner, who asked not to be named, told City Press his worry was compliance among his “less experienced and poorly educated” peers.

“My experience has been that private hospitals are shunting people out, in preparation for what is to come.

“They are freeing up beds, freeing up ICU units. Tracking in private hospitals has become a lot more stringent. The idea of a tracing system seems to be in place.

“Protective gear is there, the bells and whistles are there, but because of a lack of experience or education among junior nurses and junior emergency practitioners, the potential for cross-contamination is huge.”

Some companies were reluctant to supply workers with masks and sanitisers, he said, and instead were “selling them”.

eThekwini municipality made a call on Friday for donations to flatten the curve of the spread “in the form of non-perishable food products, hand sanitisers, liquid soup, N95 masks, disposable surgical gloves, bottled water and hygiene packs”.

A butcher said on Wednesday that his shop had been “busier than Christmas”. “People were panic-buying. There was more than enough stock, but as soon as we rolled trollies out to restock shelves, the products disappeared. There is no meat shortage.”

Perhaps the most telling of the city’s efforts to contain the spread of the virus was the empty “zombie bridge” near Albert Park.

Usually an infestation of openly injecting and snorting drug addicts who hover and stare, the “zombies” were cleared out on Saturday. City workers cleared masses of litter and last possessions, said a gloved supervisor, shaking her head as she surveyed the filth.

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