At the moment, Thursday, 27 March 2025, marks the fifth yr anniversary of the graduation of the primary Covid-19 lockdown in South Africa.
When these government-mandated lockdowns started, they had been touted by President Cyril Ramaphosa as a 21-day precaution towards the unfold of the novel coronavirus. Nevertheless it was solely two years later, in April 2022, that the foundations proscribing freedom of motion had been lastly carried out away with.
Know-how superior quickly in these two very lengthy years, with the work-from-home phenomenon gaining traction alongside studying from house for youngsters.
Shares of videoconferencing app firm Zoom, which traded under US$70/share at the beginning of 2020, surged to an all-all time excessive of $559 by October of that very same yr on the again of worldwide lockdown restrictions. Microsoft, with its Groups app, rapidly upped its sport to make the most of the speedy development in teleconferencing.
This digitalisation was not restricted to the enterprise surroundings, as social media utilization additionally surged throughout the pandemic. With whole households at house and extra in one another’s faces – and restrictions on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol limiting the variety of retailers at their disposal – folks took to social media for some much-needed downtime. Others, who confronted greater ranges of isolation, discovered refuge and a way of group on social media.
Hiya, web
The seek for issues to do led inexorably to the web, the place a whole planet of individuals going through lockdown restrictions had been growing a smorgasbord of indoor leisure actions. Some learnt how you can cook dinner, others began exercising for the primary time of their lives (and stopped proper after the pandemic) and the extra adventurers occasion learnt how you can brew their very own alcohol. That is when TikTok, the Chinese language short-video app whose recognition was beforehand restricted to youngsters, exploded into the mainstream.
The playfulness of TikTok developments helped ease among the frustration that lockdown restrictions positioned on folks’s freedoms. A few of these, comparable to the restrictions on social gatherings, curfews, social distancing and masks mandates, at first made sense in mild of the pandemic; others had been so nonsensical that they led to anger and frustration. Nevertheless, among the TikTok challenges trending on the time bordered on stupidity, maybe reflecting the dystopian state of affairs on the time. Does anybody bear in mind the milk crate problem?
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In the meantime, people who smoke and drinkers in want of a repair discovered a smouldering black market of illicit cigarettes and alcohol. Visitors police had been nonetheless getting their “cooldrinks”, although, and an underground supply market thrived regardless of the challenges. Bizarrely, most e-commerce was banned, too.
With premium cigarettes and drinks in brief provide, costs of what had been thought of to be low cost manufacturers soared to premium charges, difficult conventional perceptions associated to model loyalty and sophistication identification. Folks had been seemingly keen to pay any value to get no matter was obtainable.
In the meantime, the riot towards lockdown restrictions grew louder because the lockdowns stretched on with every passing Covid spike. Questions in regards to the efficacy of Covid-19 restrictions sparked rampant hypothesis and fuelled conspiracy theories. The efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines additionally got here below hearth by a rising legion of anti-vaxxers.
Including to the chaos was a hoard of misinformation funnelled via the identical social media platforms that served as an outlet for pent-up frustration. One story about 1,000,000 graves being dug in Soweto, apparently as a part of a authorities plot to depopulate the nation utilizing the coronavirus as an excuse, ought to have simply been seen as hoax however wasn’t.
Learn: There may be now little or no doubt that Covid leaked from a lab
Wave after wave of the Covid-19 virus got here as new variants like Omicron emerged. Nevertheless, one high quality that remained the identical all through the pandemic was South Africans’ sense of humour, with memes like former well being minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s “Zol” music displaying that although the economic system had come to a standstill, the South African spirit remained resilient.
5 years later, the Covid-19 pandemic is all however a fading unhealthy reminiscence. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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