Live stream: What time will Ramaphosa address the nation on Thursday 23 April?

For the second time in two days, Cyril Ramaphosa is set to deliver another address to the nation regarding our current status of lockdown. This time, we’re expecting something a little uplifting, as he delivers his speech via a televised broadcast and a live stream online. What time we begin, however, is still undecided.

The president is set to announce how South Africa will restrict some of its lockdown measures from next week onwards. We’re likely to get a “staged” approach, will gradually allows certain businesses and outlets to reopen. However, there are some industries that are still a long way off a return.

Live stream: Watch Cyril Ramaphosa address the nation on Thursday 23 April

[Live stream will appear here on Thursday evening, This article will be updated when an official time is confirmed.]

Why lockdown is in place

The point of lockdown is to “flatten the curve” of hospitalisations and mortality rates during the spread of this disease. If no measures were put in place, illness would ravage the population, and the number of citizens needing medical treatment would complete overwhelm our healthcare capacity.

Lockdown, at some point, has to be eased. Not just for the sake of the economy and our livelihoods, but to help people get through what looks to be a very long battle. Ramaphosa and his health officials are keen to avoid a “second wave” of the disease, but everybody needs to play their part to help us steer clear of this.

It’s believed that lockdown could be implemented in a set of stages – similar to load shedding – which vary in severity. The better South Africa performs in confronting this global health crisis, the more we can relax the rules. But some form of lockdown promises to be with us for the majority of 2020.

What time will Cyril Ramaphosa address South Africa?

We’re still waiting on confirmation of when things will get underway, but to give you a broad time slot to work with, all of his televised speeches about lockdown have taken place between 18:30 – 21:00. On Tuesday, we were up and running just after 20:30. An address of this nature tends to take place later in the evening, so the working population have the chance to watch and take-in the president’s message.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to the address nation tonight on measures to be taken beyond the nationwide lockdown to reopen the economy. M.M pic.twitter.com/AHkDw5IHza

— Jozi FM (@jozifm) April 23, 2020