(Thanks, d. - good find. :)

Reader d. writes:

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hi hobie

below is an accurate and representative report on the situation in South Africa from an excellent emerging source.

you might like to make a post of it on RMN as many of the observations are likely happening in other nations too.

regardz

d.

South Africa's looming vaccine revolt
By Tom Chivers

South Africans will find out this week whether President Cyril Ramaphosa will consign 60% of them to proxy house arrest by restricting public spaces to the Covid-19 “vaccinated”. It is a fraught decision; one that sets the terrifying powers of Big Pharma and the new class of warrior-scientists against African reality. It also risks the possibility of sparking one of the bitterest of vaccine wars.

Only 40% of the South African population has been jabbed against Covid — a slow take-up which is euphemistically described as “vaccine hesitancy”. It is anything but: it is enraged rejection.

There are a number of reasons why it is so hard to get South Africans to take the umjovu, the injection: appalling technical management of the outbreak, a prevailing scepticism towards science, wariness about the Government and a wide-spread apprehension by the poor and marginalised that this is at best another form of repression and at worst witchcraft. It is a dangerous brew in a country already in a state of great political, social and economic instability.

In common with the rest of the world, South African epidemiological estimates of fatalities at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak verged on the fantastical. Initial predictions were for between 87,000 and 350,000 fatalities in the first phase. There were 103. Two years later, with the virus in retreat, fatalities attributed to Covid (but by no means vouchsafed) are only now beginning to touch the lowest initial estimates.

Yet the South African Government imposed one of the longest and most severe lockdowns, supported by a baying national and social media. The decision has proved inappropriate in nature, premature in timing and catastrophic in impact. In a country where many depend on ad hoc daily or weekly subsistence wages, the sudden cessation of economic activity wreaked havoc amongst the poor and self-employed. A failing state was unable to deliver on its promise of subsidies, responsible policing or effective containment.

It took more than a year for the first subsidies to individuals or small businesses to start coming through. And even then they were erratic, corruption-prone, inadequate, and according to many attested reports, distributed on a racially biased basis. Nearly a quarter of small businesses have gone to the wall and unemployment has rocketed.

Continues:

https://unherd.com/2021/12/south-africas-looming-vaccine-revolt/

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