The reports coming off Muizenberg beach at the weekend pretended to be real news. But behind the earnest questions and patiently held microphones there was the unmistakable faux-professionalism of the patronising tabloid writer who keeps a straight face, nods sympathetically and then asks: “So when did you first start suspecting that aliens had turned your husband into a jar of Bovril?”
The voyeurs knew exactly what they were looking for — online advertising for the event featured the dog-whistle “scamdemic” — and they weren’t disappointed. An elderly woman, looking serenely vacant, claimed that she was a skilled virologist, immunologist and quantum physicist, before explaining that viruses were parasites that couldn’t be transferred between people and that masks were therefore useless.
Another, fiddling with what looked like a G-string draped across her face, said she didn’t want “the masses” on the beach, obviously, but that it should be opened to other people, presumably ones who were not part of “the masses”, presumably in sort of exclusive way. Yep, it’s nice there in 1982.
A third protester became the change he wanted to see in the world by wearing a rubber sheep mask. I’m not sure if he was trying to shame the Sheeple who blindly follow science and reality, or was there as a representative of the Muizenberg Lodge of the National Ovine Appreciation Society, but either way it was perfectly in keeping with the day.
And soon the circus rolled into its second, inevitable act: the backlash. On social media, some marvelled bitterly at the vagueness of the police response, as officers in riot gear wandered about the beach like penguins waiting for their zookeeper to turn up with a bucket of herrings.
I suppose it felt like a position to take, but it shows how numbed we’ve become that so many of us want the police to treat the rich as violently as they treat the poor, instead of demanding that the police treat the poor as carefully as they treat the rich.
Later, and with supreme irony, ANC politicians demanded to know why nobody had been arrested. So there it was. The standard South African’s response to a Covid-related non-story: verbiage from the state, and drivel from angry people.
And once again, not a doctor to be seen. It’s a trend that’s become glaringly obvious to me since December, when Dr Andrea Mendelsohn wrote an “open letter” to Cape Town, begging citizens to take the most basic of precautions as she and her colleagues were overwhelmed by the growing second wave.
It was a good letter, shocking even. It’s still on the internet and you should read it. But what surprised me most about it was that it was the first of its sort I’d read in the mainstream media, even though we were 10 months into the pandemic.
I realised, then, that I could name a dozen politicians in the ANC and DA who regularly talked about Covid-19 and at least three angry little men who have made a grubby name for themselves in SA peddling conspiracy theories online. But front-line medical staff, given a large and powerful platform to state their case? Dr Mendelsohn seemed all but unique.
No doubt this is partly a factor of living in an attention economy. Politicians and propagandists pour out deliciously triggering words. Medical experts, on the other hand, tend to measure what they say and are comfortable holding uncertainty, making for a deeply unsatisfying hit of online adrenaline. I suspect the fundamental stoicism of their profession also plays a part.
When a podcaster or a politician has had a rough day, perhaps because their Maga hat didn’t arrive on time or they’ve been asked to attend a committee meeting, the podcaster will explain to you that civilisation is ending, while the politician will release a statement claiming that she is the victim of a plot.
When a doctor has had a bad day because they’ve watched someone die slowly and in terrible pain, or been blamed for that death by a grief-torn family, or found themselves too tired to think, they’ll simply tell you, in private — always in private — that it’s rough but these things happen, and on we go.
This hopelessly skewed focus has been with us for as long as words have been printed. But Covid is not going to fade away any time soon. A third wave is still possible. Which is why the media must, at least until this crisis is over, do its utmost to make room for those quiet yet profoundly authoritative voices from the front lines; to leave Muizenberg beach to the tabloids; and just now and then point the microphone at people who actually know what they’re talking about.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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