‘Ramaphosa must fall’ – SA wants Cyril sacked

Ramaphosa's latest move to stop the spread of Delta, a COVID-19 variant first discovered in India, could be his undoing.

By / / Viral
ramaphosa must fall sa shutdown

President Cyril Ramaphosa is the latest South African incumbent to face the dreaded ‘must fall’ boycott.

South Africans started off the new week with tighter lockdown restrictions amid a growing healthcare crisis that could mirror the horrors we witnessed in India earlier this year.

Alcohol ban rubs SA the wrong way

The president announced, on Sunday evening, that the country would go into adjusted Level 4 lockdown with alcohol sales — for off-and-on-site consumption — prohibited for two weeks.

This, Ramaphosa explained, was a necessary measure to reduce the number of alcohol-related hospitalisations at a time where every bed counts.

The alcohol ban has been widely condemned by industry stakeholders, including the National Liquor Trade Council that has threatened to defy the prohibition.

“We are not going to let this decision by the President stand. We are going to take him on, we are going to consult with our members today. If needs be, it means we will defy this ban. Who is going to support us for the next two weeks? What is better? Breaking the law for supporting our families? For us, we feel that we need to be taken seriously and we will do that, and whatever is necessary,” council conveyor Ntimane warned.

‘Ramaphosa must fall’ rings off on social media

This sentiment was shared by many frustrated South Africans who have pinned the government’s failure to deal with COVID-19 squarely on Ramaphosa.

The country’s snail-paced vaccine rollout has been hampered by the rapid spread of a variant first discovered in India, referred to in virology circles as ‘Delta’. This strain, Ramaphosa warned, “is rapidly displacing the Beta variant, which has been dominant in our country until now.”

The latest infection figures seem to support the president’s concerns about the high transmissibility of this variant.

This graph, compiled by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) tracks the seven-day moving average number of COVID-19 cases per province, between April and June 2021.

nicd Gauteng level 4
Photo: Sourced from NICD

On Sunday, a record 15 036 positive cases were recorded with 122 deaths added to South Africa tally of 59 900 COVID-19-related fatalities.

Still, horrifying figures such as these have no bearing on the public’s frustration with the lockdown regulations. Here are some of the reactions we picked from the ‘Ramaphosa must fall’ bandwagon.