In the context of this rant, ‘Rage’ refers to the relatively recent South African tradition whereby teenagers who have finished high school, go on a binge to let off steam after their final exams. Rage events are normally hosted in coastal hotspots just prior to the kick-off of the Christmas holiday season. Booze, smooching, dancing, sweating and coupling are de rigueur. Its nearest equivalent in the US would be Spring Break. In most years, I have absolutely no objection to the principle of Rage - high school can be a rough time for adolescent human beings and they should be afforded the time and space to decompress.
This, however, is NOT most years. For a moment, let us put aside the weapons-grade morons who think Covid 19 is caused by 5G or vaccine profiteers and acknowledge that the virus is an unprecedented human health risk. Anyone with a quarter of a neuron would have assumed that Rage events needed to be banned by the government as the number of South African Covid cases skyrocketed and research about ‘super spreader’ events became clear. Relying on the South African government for anything other than a litany of jaw-dropping scandals, cover ups and lies would be ridiculous however. But everyone knows this. I thought it obvious, therefore, that any person with sufficient cerebral function to eat without assistance, would have understood that Rage needed to be cancelled this year.
Alas.
While our state schools were still writing their final exams, a number of private school kids jetted off for Rage. These are the most privileged students in the country, supposedly just imbued with the country’s premier education. They are the offspring of the richest South Africans. Their connections and privilege will give them access to work and further educational opportunities that most young South Africans don’t even know exist. The future captains of industry.
Well, there’s a dearth of leadership in the world right now and clearly it ain’t about to improve. It is almost beyond comprehension that this bunch of supposedly uber-educated imbeciles thought it just dandy to attend Rage. It is even more gobsmacking that their parents okayed and then funded their little darlings’ super-spreader extravaganzas.
The organisers of the Rage events made platitudes about social distancing and following regulations blah blah blah. The naivete (or stupidity) in this is staggering. Were they never 18 themselves? Have they ever met an 18-year-old loosed on the world with full freedom and cash to burn? EVERYTHING those kids went to Rage for, specifically precluded social distancing and specifically included the exchange of all manner of bodily fluids. While the dance floors heaved with sweaty bodies, every flowerbed, alley, dune, car seat and public convenience was no doubt occupied by Ragers intent on becoming, at the very least, intimately familiar with the internal workings of one another’s faces.
This is normal - it is part of being 18 in many parts of the world… but it is sociopathic madness in 2020. Some estimates have put the infection rate of these Ragers at 90%.
So it was that these future leaders left Rage carrying a special, early Chritsmas gift. They went home to bequeath their gifts of Covid RNA to their families and communities just about to gather for the holidays. To their parents, their siblings, their aging grandparents, shop keepers, petrol attendants, domestic workers - and any number of others who, if they become symptomatic, will not have access to anything other than the crime-against-humanity that passes for government health services in South Africa.
My77-year-old father recently recovered from Covid. He was on oxygen for a week. It is highly likely he would have been hospitalised, but there wasn’t a private hospital bed available in the Eastern Cape and so my mother nursed him to health with the help of saintly GP. We may have been able to find rusty gurney in the corridor of a government facility but the horrors to which my poor dad was subjected by the ANC government’s idea of health earlier in the year precluded this. As I write, the ICUs in the Durban region are full to capacity, mostly with Covid patients.
Many will not be as fortunate as my father. As our president said chillingly last night, for a lot of people, this will be their last Christmas. Three hundred and ninety heroic South African health workers have died of Covid. The Ragers and their parents have shoved a big, privileged, middle finger in the faces of those heroes and their families.
And for what exactly?