The Covid-19 pandemic has massively altered South Africa’s societal landscape and steepened its reconstruction and development trajectory. It has been a wrecking ball for public and private organisations, families, and the psychosocial wellbeing of individuals and communities alike.

Some of these, of course, were already in dire straits before the pandemic.

South African society has experienced a generalised and palpable sense of shared social anxiety, observable through the ever-present WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter messages of #RIP or #Restinpeace, and other such variations. Indeed, this permeating sense of social anxiety has been particularly acute on the days of the “#familymeeting”, that being the colloquial social media catchphrase describing when President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses the nation on the Covid-19 responses and action.

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