Will Masisi Lock Us down?
Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday July 12, 2021 15:30
Speculation has been rife on social media that Masisi’s scheduled address woul be mainly to announce that the country would be going on a lockdown that would see only essential service providers doing their work.
According to circulating information, a lockdown is expected to be effected by Wednesday until early August as the country battles a wave of an increase in COVID- 19 cases amid frustration around the slow vaccine rollout. Thus far the country has fully vaccinated just under 110,000 people. Over 75,000 people have tested positive to the virus while just over 1,200 succumbed to the pandemic-related complications. Social commentators led the topic on social media with many people expressing frustration should the lockdown news be true. “I have it on good authority, that a heavy/hard lockdown is impending.
When the President gets off the national podium on Tuesday, your reality may be altogether different. Our government, has practically run out of aces. The fabled ‘Task Force’ has practically come to its wit’s end. They have blamed everything under the sun, including alcohol. They lied, to save face. In the end reality stares them in the face. They stand defeated. All they can do is lock you up inside your houses. The vaccination campaign is a farce. A 16-month long State of Emergency has yielded nothing. No extra capacities have been built. Billions have been squandered. GO A PALA. We are back to where we began.
We are back to March, 2020,” prominent lawyer, Kgosietsile Ngakaagae posted on Facebook. Ngakaagae further wrote that the country’s leaders must be held to account for “why we are where we are”. “Let’s tune in to the President’s speech on Tuesday.
I hope he tells us about the vaccines, because anything else, will be empty rhetoric. Ga re jewe ka loleme, ga re madila. Let’s remind our President that our sick and dying deserve vaccines: not a State of Emergency: not excuses, not lectures,” he wrote. The post was met with dozens of comments with many supporting Ngakaagae that there should not be a lockdown as Batswana would economically suffer more. On the other hand, some Batswana believe that a lockdown could be a necessary evil as health facilities cannot take it anymore.
On their weekly updates, the COVID-19 Presidential Task led by Dr Kereng Masupu has always indicated that a lockdown could not be ruled out if the situation gets out of hand. Attempts to get a comment from Dr Masupu yesterday bore no fruit as his phone rang unanswered. The Press Secretary to the President, Batlhalefi Leagajang, called on Batswana to wait for Tuesday’s national address. “I cannot preempt what the President would address the nation on. It is for all Batswana to wait and hear what the President has to say to them,” he said.