# 21 Communique from SAFCAM

Communique #21                            26-09-2020           

Dear Subscribers

In three months’ time Christmas 2020 will already be over, and we pray and hope that by then too, the worst of the pandemic will be over, and this nightmare will be history. Meanwhile let us continue to make the most of the opportunity to give attention to useful alternative activities.

But maybe we need to also raise our voices over the overdue relaxing of restrictive measures.

The devastation from the continued lockdowns in many of our countries, is risking more lives than the virus could ever harm, especially here in Africa. The MSM (mainstream-media) and Governments must stop driving fear into their followers and citizens, and instead empower people to work and protect themselves and their livelihoods.

Why are governments treating their populations as if they are all babies needing a nanny?

Apart from dictatorships, never was it known that the responsibility of citizens for their own basic welfare was completely removed from them! And what is surprising is that people have been ready to submit to this. Perhaps only because of the scaremongering and brainwashing which prepared them for total subjugation.

Presidents and their ministers have for long enough now, asserted the right to impose limitations on the freedom of their citizens to attempt to prevent the virus from infecting and risking lives. But rule by ministerial decree is only justified in emergencies. In any democracy, parliament is the proper place to thrash out the calculations regarding the best measures required, especially as the consequences involve restraints on individual liberty. As the fear regarding the harmfulness of Covid-19 recedes, it is time to restore government by the consent of the governed. Draconian restrictions need to be lifted rapidly, and hand the responsibility to the people to take care and keep themselves and others safe. We must stop expecting presidents and prime ministers and government to be our “nannies” and decide what’s good for us.

It is interesting that it is the English-speaking countries, like the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that have imposed the most unreasonable measures, and anglophone countries on our continent have emulated them. In most other countries, they’re done with lockdowns. The countries that are considered as most ‘bureaucratic’, are the ones that are pushing back more and making more reasonable decisions, setting more sensible guidelines, than the anglophone societies.

‘Rector’s Manual’

https://youtu.be/FRd7YtgUq3I  = Link to the 16-minute video presentation of the first part of Animating and Governing the Community: The Ministry of the Salesian Rector is available on YouTube. Other animation aids for the communities, will be distributed via email to all Provinces and Rectors. The video, originally in Italian, has been dubbed in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. It consists of an interview with Fr Stefano Martoglio, Vicar of the Rector Major, and Fr Ivo Coelho, General Councillor for Formation, and deals with “The Salesian consecrated identity,” which is the first of the three parts of the document that was released during General Chapter 28.

FATIMA -The newly released Fatima movie is available online for free, so I watched it and enjoyed it immensely. It is well acted and put together without all sorts of preachy or sugar-sweet bits like some faith-based movies. (FD)

Wishing you a happy end to September and happier start to October.

God bless

Camiel and Francois