SA Set to Face New Ban

President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Corona Command Council are not quite finished with their array of restrictions, bans and prohibitions on hapless South Africans. According to a secret memo, leaked to this website by a mask-wearing informer, the government plans to ban poverty due to the debilitating effect it is having on the fight against Covid-19.

In a strongly worded warning expected to me made any day now, Ramaphosa writes in the memo that he and his government’s patience is wearing thin with the continued poverty in South Africa and that it is only a matter of days before South Africans can see poverty as being deemed illegal under the Corona Command Council’s Covid-19 restrictions.

“Alcohol is banned because it changes the behaviour of South Africans, leading them to eschew anti-Corona safety-measures and contribute to the filling of hospitals,” says Ramaphosa. “Well, alcohol is not the only culprit – poverty, which South Africans continue to embrace, is just as much responsible for changing the attitudes and actions of some of our fellow countrymen and women, causing them to act in an irresponsible manner not conducive to the fight against Covid-19.”

Ramaphosa says examples of the affect poverty has in hampering the government’s fight against the pandemic are rife.

“Poverty sees people drop their guard against Corona by continuing to live in cramped quarters in tin-shacks,” he says. “Being poor also makes South African feel that they do not have to buy a car to commute to work, opting instead to be transported in over-filled mini-bus taxis. And it has been proven that poverty leads to violent crime, which sees injured victims taking-up space in hospital trauma units. Not to mention the inconvenience of malnourished children in medical-care centres at this time when we should unilaterally be focusing on Corona virus.”

Ramaphosa says that although he and the ANC have remained patient until now, poverty is set to be made illegal as long as the Covid-19 pandemic persists, and longer if required.

“On advice of the Corona Command Council and with the support of government, we are setting-out motions to ban poverty in the near-foreseeable future,” he says. “South Africans can expect strong and decisive measures through which the occurrence of poverty will be policed, and anyone not adhering to the regulations by continuing to live in poverty will face the full brunt of the law. I suggest that we as a nation also use this period in which poverty is illegal to reflect on how poverty was able to gain such a strong and pervasive hold on the country.”

Ramaphosa writes that South Africans should look at the example set by their government. “Myself and the cabinet have not allowed poverty to enter our worlds,” he says, “so it is inexplicable that the rest of the country permit the ongoing poverty to prevail unabated.”

The date of this announcement is not known, but it is suggested that South Africans get rid of any signs of poverty as soon as possible as the ban is likely to be enforced as soon as it is communicated at the next family gather.