CASE STUDY [30 Marks) There are limits to what a capitalist government can do in this crisis Greg. Dor 13 May 2020 The South African government must be called what it is a capitalist government that has the responsibility of managing a developing country. It does not have the resources and institutions that govements of developed capitalist countries have at their disposal. It does not rest on vast sums of wealth accumulated by many decades of capitalist development, colonial conquests and continuing imperialist domination. The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing capitalist crisis has left the governments of these advanced countries unable to cope. They have watched their health systems overwhelmed and their economies tank. What does this mean for a developing country such as South Africa? The government is expected to jump into action and solve the crisis of access to basic necessities that millions of ordinary working-class people face on a daily basis. But can it? is such a task within its powers? The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed this ongoing crisis to many who did not know about it or had forgotten it was there. It has prompted the government to implement measures and policies to address aspects of this crisis that many would not have believed possible a few months ago, including an unprecedented financial package and income grant for the unemployed. There have been arguments that the government is not doing enough, that it should be doing more. But there are limits to what this government can do. The question has to be asked does this government have the capacity to solve this crisis? Does it have the power? And if it doesn't what then? Must people continue to struggle to survive, must people continue to live in poverty, or are there other alternatives to look towards? If capitalism and capitalist governments cannot solve this crisis, real alternatives need to make their way on to the agenda A crisis of basic necessities The Covid-19 crisis has made a clear that most people living in South Africa do not have safe and secure access to basics such as water, sanitation, food and healthcare. But to be clear, these were issues before the crisis and they will be there after it. What this crisis has done is expose these issues and it has exacerbated them. In the early stages of the outbreak of the virus in South Africa, there were calls from government and health experts for ordinary people to prioritise personal hygiene in order to avoid catching the virus. In this drive, it became clear that many people could not just wash their hands Now, some weeks into the lockdown, it is becoming clear that people do not have adequate and secure access to food. There has been a drive to provide people with food parcels, but it is not clear who will get this assistance - those of South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grants, those who applied, or everyone who needs food? The competition for scarce resources, combined with these unclear and insufficient measures, results in opportunism and will lead to more chaos. There is growing frustration and anger. Social grants will not solve the key issue systemic hunger. Access to healthcare is soon to become an even bigger issue than it already is. Public healthcare is notoriously overcrowded and under-resourced, and it will only be further overwhelmed. In the past few weeks it may, at times, have seemed that the worst could be escaped, that we have avoided the runaway outbreak of the virus which has overwhelmed other countries' health systems But it is becoming obvious that the worst has only been delayed. The shutdown has afforded the government some time to prepare the health sector, but the reality is that despite these efforts it will still be woefully underprepared for what is to come. In the coming weeks and months, the numbers and capacities of healthcare workers will be stretched beyond their limits. Personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline workers is already an issue, while the number of ventilators is another. As hospitals fill up and staff get sick, people wil have even less access to healthcare than before. The government's Covid-19 interventions It is true that the state has moved quicker than many will have expected or believed possible. But it is also dear that even this hasnt and won't be enough In terms of water, milions of rands have been reprioritised from existing water and sanitation projects to implement stopgap measures. 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