  This research quantifies the various South African lockdown regimes, for the
SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, in terms of the basic reproduction number, $r_0$. It
further calculates the levels of immunity required for these selfsame lockdown
regimes to begin to work and predicts perceived values, should infections have
been underestimated by a factor of 10. The latter results are compelling. The
first, level-5 lockdown was a valiant attempt to contain the highly infectious,
SARS-CoV-2 virus, based on a limited knowledge. Its basic reproduction number
($r_0 = 1.93$) never came anywhere close to the requirement of being less than
unity. Obviously, it could be anticipated that the same would apply for
subsequent, lower levels of lockdown. The basic reproduction number for the
level-3 lockdown was found to be $2.34$ and that of the level-4 lockdown,
$1.69$.The suggestion is therefore that the level-4 lockdown might have been
marginally `smarter' than the `harder', level-5 lockdown, although its basic
reproduction number may merely reflect an adjustment by the public to the new
normal, or the ever-present error associated with data sets, in general. The
pandemic's basic reproduction number was calculated to be $3.16$, in the
Swedish context. The lockdowns therefore served to ensure that the medical
system was not overwhelmed, bought it valuable time to prepare and provided
useful data. The lockdowns nonetheless failed significantly in meeting any
objective to curtail the pandemic.
