SOS – Steve On Sunday

Sunday 23 August 2020

SOS – Steve on Sunday

THE WEEK THAT WAS

23 – 30 August 2020

My fellow obedient (and disobedient) citizens

Here on the fringes of the normally dry summer-hot, (winter-cold) Kalahari Desert, we are experiencing very strange weather. Not as strange as many of our fine leader and his National Coronavirus Command Council’s decisions over the last few months, but strange nevertheless.

We plummeted to a -6 Celcius during this last week with a maximum of about 12 degrees Celcius, this a mere few days after experiencing maximums of 25 and 26 degrees. Light snow fell in some Kimberley suburbs, and sleet in others. This coming Monday (tomorrow) a maximum of 28 degrees Celcius has been forecast which means I have to get out my leopard skin swimming costume and throw away my blankets. And the rest of the week appears to be consistently in the high 20s.

Pardon?

You say that on Wednesday we are back in Winter? According to the weather forecast you use?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Oh well, cannot change the weather can we? I am sure though that your source is incorrect, but maybe not.

I suppose we can change other things though, yes?

Our three stooges – the Great Triumvirate of Power in this country – are relaxing for a bit while they plan our future. Us innocents all think we are merrily on our way to Level 1 and then to Level Zero where we can live happily ever after, don’t we?

Read on MacDuff, read on, but before I destroy the reputation of the genuine Great Triumvirate that did once exist let me tell you about them, briefly. They were golfers, not that you weekend hackers would have heard of them, and between the three of them they seemed to be the only Open Championship winners for donkey’s years, between 1894 and 1914. Indeed, Harry Vardon, James Braid and JH Taylor won 15 of those championships during those 20 years, and on the five years they did not win, one of them were the runners up. Amazing stuff.

Of course there have been other ‘Big Threes’ in golf such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, and the ‘Big Three’ from World War II – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, but it is our very own Great Triumvirate of Power I am writing about – Adolph Ramaphosa, Bek(i) Mussolinicele and the elderly NDZ who should have retired at 60 years as she herself suggests to all and sundry.

There have already, this last week, been rumblings once again about hospitals filling up with alcohol-related injuries and car wrecks costing many police man (and woman) hours to the economy. Not enough space for the so-called pandemic illnesses, so they say, once again.

Ground Hog Day round number August.

By the way, anyone had the normal influenza or a head cold this year?

Just asking…

And then our good doctor in charge of medicines and hospitals, who is looking more and more stressed as the months idle away, has started muttering and mumbling about the second wave of this Chines* vir**. A second wave? We in the hinterland are only going through the first wave peak as I write. The good doctor has mentioned the second wave more than once recently.

This makes me think, which does actually happen from time to time. This power that the local not so Great Triumvirate of RSA has loved so much since March 2020 has been slipping. Alarmingly so for them, and it is noticeable in their facial and other expressions. The people are not happy and the message is getting through. What does Mao’s red book say about all this insurrection of the masses? Me not going down that road except to say that there are not enough of those truly unbelievable men and women in blue. Nor in cammo for that matter.

This relaxation of the rules I believe to be temporary and that another alcohol ban is on the cards is very possible. I also do not think that the maximum 50 persons at a gathering will be relaxed, not until next year anyway. Unless it is at a so-called heroes’ funeral and then hundreds will be allowed.

This preamble was merely to get you ready for the following few paragraphs. Seriously, I have been waiting for someone, be it media or some government department or NGO/NPO, to bring it out into the open.

And finally it happened! And not to my AA either. In our love for acronyms, AA stands for ‘Absolute Astonishment’ and not what you thought it stood for.

I won’t say I am delighted it came out of the closet, but it had to.

It is all to do with BLM whatever that stands for. I only know about BBLMM which means Blunt Balding Lunderstedts Matter Most, which of course is me. Enough said. Back to this announcement from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases that was in the Citizen newspaper of 21 August 2020 in connection with Covid-19.

Wait for it!

“Race is for the first time reported to have an association with in-hospital mortality, with a higher risk of mortality in individuals who were black African or coloured, compared to white individuals.”

Did you get that? Black Africans and Coloureds are more likely to have a ‘higher risk’ than the whiteys.

They go on to say that “…a similar trend was observed in studies in the United States, where blacks, Hispanics and those from lower socioeconomic status are more likely to die of Covid-19.”

I wonder if the NICD, who issued this statement, are aware of two facts.

One, the Black and Hispanic groups in the USA are a minority, and therefore the stats are quite frightening for there.

Two, in the good old Republic of South Africa, the Black Africans are in the majority by more than 10 to one in comparison to the White Africans. Check the last census.

In theory, it is expected that with such a majority there should indeed be more Black Africans getting the disease and dying from said disease. It just makes sense.

What does not make sense is that the NICD has compared the Blacks in the USA to the Blacks in this country in regard to statistics and have seriously made me wonder why and how they have jobs. And why they get paid I have no idea – because as sure as superglue in coffins they get paid somehow by government, and unlike many of us ‘workers’, have been paid since March this year.

I could carry on forever, but methinks I have written enough for this week.

Have a good week thinking about tourism, or the lack of it, because I am going to harp once again on what is not happening in the hinterland’s tourism set-up.

I thank you.