PSG CEO Piet Mouton, whose investment company has developed some of SA’s biggest corporate successes, such as Capitec, has called for the imposition of mandatory vaccinations, a step he said was necessary for the battered SA economy to open up.
In an open letter on Monday, he said people who choose not to be vaccinated should be denied entry to restaurants, public parks, shopping centres, airports, businesses and educational institutions.
While the use of vaccine passports has been controversial globally, momentum has been growing locally for its use.
SA’s economy has been among the hardest hit by Covid-19, losing more than 1-million jobs in 2020 as the country imposed lockdowns.
Experts have said a vaccination rate close to 70% of the population would allow normality to return. They also cited evidence showing that the unvaccinated are much more likely to spread the virus, get seriously ill or die, while also making it more likely that variants that may then be resistant to existing vaccines will develop.
“If you prefer lockdown and its consequences above vaccination, then the burden of lockdown should be yours, and yours alone,” said Mouton, whose PSG stable includes Curro Holdings, PSG Konsult and Stadio Holdings. It unbundled most of its Capitec stake in 2020.
On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said SA could consider vaccination passports as it seeks to more fully open the economy. Earlier in September, financial services firm Discovery said it would introduce mandatory vaccination for all staff; Sanlam followed, saying it would do the same.
Ripple effect
Only 7.19-million people, or 18% of the adult population, are fully immunised with either Pfizer’s double-shot jab or Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine. SA’s vaccination drive got off to a slow start in February, but has since picked up pace as the government secured enough stock.
While admitting his ideas could be seen as controversial, Mouton said the country’s economy was on a precipice and lockdown restrictions needed to end.
“If a sufficient percentage of our population is not vaccinated, we will simply never return to normality again,” he said. “We have reached a point where our government should start enforcing principles like those implemented in many other countries around the world.”
He said the unvaccinated should accept lockdowns, curfews and other regulations deemed necessary to curb infections.
“The president has alluded to some form of restriction for the unvaccinated, and we support this,” Mouton wrote.
He said people with specific medical conditions who may have legitimate concerns about vaccination were too few relative to the size of SA’s population to pose a risk to society if they refused vaccination.
But those who refuse to see the ripple effect of their choice not to vaccinate should lose the right to complain about the state of the economy.
“If their business is struggling, they must accept that they have contributed to its potential demise,” he said.
The Restaurant Association of SA has, however, argued against enforcing vaccination on customers, saying this would cause further unhappiness and loss of business.
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