South Africa is in Lockdown, extended Lockdown as of yesterday.  How do we know this?  Our President told us.

South Africa is one of the examples of a Unitary State that can be found world-wide.  Citizens of a Unitary State have one vote for one Government.  This government solves all our problems with this one vote that the majority of the citizens give them?  South Africa’s Constitution has a Bill of Rights.  There is no Bill of Obligations contained in it.  It also gives the Government of the day many rights, with several oversight bodies in place to keep these rights in check. (One huge omission is an oversight body on education – meaning, we will accept the philosophy of education administered to us whether we like it or not.)

The above scenario represents, in a very abbreviated form, the law of the land.  In essence this structure of laws determines the thinking of a nation in that it lays out what one can think and what is outside of the law and may, therefore, not be contemplated.  If in South Africa, another political party was voted into government, this political party could bring in a different Party-Political Doctrine and use the same ‘funnel’ of laws to make their doctrine appear within the Economic sphere or the Human Liberty sphere.  Entrenched, however, in the ‘funnel’ of the laws is the reality that there is one Government that will decide on everything from Taxation, budget priorities, to Economic policy, to Education and, to an extent, Religious freedom.

This Government of Rights, has the right to appoint Ministers and change them around from being Ministers of education to being Ministers of Safety and Security, or Agriculture and Tourism every couple of months or years.  Huh?  How can these Ministers be asked to love and care for such strikingly different portfolios, never mind have the understanding, skill, and experience to be able to deal with these changes?  Our South African government is trying to run Eskom, SAA, Transnet, and more.  These government owned businesses are all hopelessly bankrupt and funded unilaterally with the taxes of private people that are allocated by the doctrine of one political party with the ‘funnel’ of laws granted to them by our Constitution.

Let’s have a look at what this ‘structure’ has delivered for Covid-19 so far.  It has unilaterally locked down most businesses that are supposed to be providing for the material needs of others (The definition of the Economic Sphere is to provide for the material needs of others).  These economic activities provide the entire possibility of a tax base for a Nation.  This tax base does not have to be used to fund people employed in the economic sphere as they receive remuneration for their input in the Economic sphere.  It does have to provide a living to the individuals employed in the judicial system, army, police, basic services, roads and infrastructure, its own ‘beamptes’ and the like.  Our Unitary State Government has also shut down schools, prevented people from going to Church or Mosque and taken their fundamental right to association and movement away.  Gone is their right to earn a living too.  Don’t worry they say, here is some funding for those earning less than about R16000 per month.  All those earning more are going to lose out or their employers in the economic realm are going to lose out.  Our Government has the right to use the military and police to enforce all this from their tax base.  This tax base as described above essentially arrives in the government’s pocket as a consequence of human beings growing, processing, beneficiating nature products for the material needs of the very State that is locking them up. (Many of whom are patently impotent at being in the economic sphere at all.)   In essence the Government has taken decisions, based on enough information or not, interpreted correctly or not, to impinge dramatically on many basic human rights.  They are assuming that the people of South Africa need to be in some form of enlarged home for incompetent people, a similar type of incompetence that they experience in their own ability to run SAA and others.  Is this real or false?

What one can see developing from the flow of logic that has been taken above is that there is an abundance of power in the Rights sphere in South Africa.  This abundance of power is impacting on the human dignity of its people.  This impact has the potential to lead to large scale unhappiness and consequent actions that will need more might and money to manage. When people get too hungry or too denuded of their inherent desire to live and learn from their lives, the results can be catastrophic.  The First World War was the result of exactly the same scenario as described above.

Moving now to the economic sphere, human beings have developed tremendous competence in relevance and efficiency in their specific fields.  Will this be possible to recover if these individual businesses are not able to be sustained?  The Government is saying that they will come up with more support measures for businesses, but can they really manage to do this when these very support measures are inherently funded by the value creation of the businesses they are strangling?  The Government’s interference in both the Human Liberty Sphere as well as the Economic Sphere might seem quite impressive to them and to many of the people right now.  It is however very dangerous and something that they will not be able to manage if the scales tip too far.  (See the Balance Beam)

The solution lies in the Government seeing themselves as one part of a trinity, the Rights part.  They should be making agreements with both the Educators and Religious leaders, as well as the Economic leaders, on an EQUAL footing.  The mistake that they are currently making is that they are trying to take control of all three elements of ANY Societal reality. Leave human holism to the people in the society that treasure this.  Talk to them as equals or you will face the wrath of the people when you get it wrong.  Talk to the elected leaders of the people within society that are in the relevance and efficiency game – the Economy. If these economic people are lost to society as a whole, there is going to be no tax base left for the Rights Sphere or for the Liberty Sphere (training and development of the human beings).  If Human Beings who are central to the operation of the 3 spheres leave  then nature alone returns to play where once there was human society – Chernobyl and others.

So, writer, why have you not addressed the Covid-19 pandemic?  Don’t you care for those that might die?  Are you so dull that you cannot see that the whole country will come to a complete grinding halt and none of your idealism will be possible anyway?  My response to such arguments in brief would be the following:

• If our Government spoke from an inner orientation that they are only one third of the solution as suggested above, a more reasonable and balanced course of action would have been found.
• Any living organism needs an ecosystem to survive, they all need food or a host to survive in. This Covid-19 virus is being viewed as THE EXCEPTION. It does not need food, it just kills.  This is nonsense.  Let’s rather find out why some people make good food for it and others not and thereby deal with the right issues.

I am in favour of flattening the curve – up to a point.

David.