Page 10 - Bulletin 23- 2020

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the head of the town’s Central Bureau established for tackling the flu crisis, and “if people
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wanted any explanation he told them to go to him later on.” As far as the municipal authori-
ties were concerned, the parlous state of the town made such high-handed direction a must.

“At no time in the history of this town has the Town Council been so absolute”, acknow-
ledged the town clerk. “It merely had to issue requests and vigorous workers saw to it that no

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one dared to refuse.”

The speed and extent of the Spanish flu in South Africa – it is estimated that over 50 per cent

of the population contracted the disease in the space of a month – meant that quite soon it
began to wane, as the number of people with some immunity to it by virtue of having

suffered a bout grew rapidly. As a doctor explained in simple terms at the time, there was
“not the same amount of fuel [left] to feed the fires”.
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300,000 deaths in six weeks

Some 300,000 South Africans died in the six-week epidemic, i.e. about six per cent of the

entire population, a mortality rate exceeded only in Western Samoa (25 per cent) and India
(6.2 per cent). The severity of the South African experience probably owes much to the

country’s well-developed railway system, which facilitated the transmission of the highly

infectious flu far and wide, the high number of young adult men using this system (especially
migrant workers and soldiers), and the fact that much of the population’s first encounter with

Spanish flu was with its deadly second wave and not its milder first wave with its immunising
effect.

Of these approximately 300,000 deaths, some 78 per cent were Africans, 12 per cent
Coloureds, 8 per cent Whites and 2 per cent Indians. Of these, African and Coloured deaths

were markedly higher than the percentage of the overall population which each racial group
constituted, suggesting that, among them, living conditions were particularly conducive to the

spread of the disease and that in many cases the ability to stop an infection turning fatal was
seriously compromised by poor physical condition and a lack of effective nursing. As already

noted, the majority of those who died were in the 18-40 age-bracket, and of these more were

male than female, perhaps because in towns men were often the breadwinners who could not