Lockdown limits and a brand new post Covid-19 world

Today marks the eighth day of South Africa’s 21-day lockdown. The gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic on the country and the world dictated the unprecedented and far-reaching measure, even as it is economically and otherwise unaffordable.

Social life has been, for the most part, on the inverse. Nonetheless, as is the refrain of the cynical: “there is a price for everything.”

Save for some of the urban areas, the lockdown seems so far relatively successful. Greater success is vital for the defeat of Covid-19 in our country and the world. Otherwise, the economic and social costs imposed upon the country may be fruitless if breaches in the urban areas eventually come to undermine efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The root cause of the breaches is social in nature. It has to do with the apartheid spatial settlement design and the systematic socioeconomic neglect of the urban African (and rural) landscapes and relatively unsuccessful attempts at redressing imbalances in the post-apartheid era.

In informal settlements, for example, it is nearly impossible for people to stay indoors. The dwellings are generally minuscule, lack water and sanitation and most have no yards, forcing residents to share, often in large numbers, these basic amenities.

These are reservoirs of unemployment, what the distinguished Kenyan intellectual, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, described as “place[s] of confinement, literally and metaphorically; … where people truly live in shadows of poverty, ignorance and disease”, even as they toil to alleviate their lot.

It is not difficult to understand why anyone would want to escape such inhospitable spaces even if for a few hours. So, notwithstanding the nobility of its cause, the lockdown sits in contentious parallel with this materiality; posing a genuine conundrum: we need the confinement but cannot afford to sustain it.

Of course, a long-term solution cannot be willed immediately into existence. The situation thus obliges the government to deploy most of the available resources and measures – such as the random testing campaign announced this week – to combat the disease in these areas since the mass movement and mingling of people risks spreading the disease even faster.

We also need to up the level of civic education so that the police and the army eventually complement ongoing efforts at promoting consciousness.

Nothing could be foolhardier than a descent into the twin evils of populism and alarmism at this time. But it would be wise to anticipate the potential for social discord to arise out of the fusion of the disruption of the normalcy of life, as well as the pangs and fangs of socioeconomic factors.

Covid-19 – and similar diseases and natural disasters that may occur in the future – also illustrates the need for a social consensus that eschews poverty in principle and acknowledges that our interconnectedness as fellow nationals and citizens of the world also means that the affluent are inevitably affected by the deprivations borne by the poor.

While the goodwill and generosity shown by the more well-to-do in our country is to be welcomed, our real salvation lies in a sustained and honest discussion about the measures necessary for reducing the levels of poverty in order to make ours a more equitable and humane society.

In this, we have no choice. The already perilous state of the economy, the effects of the recent Moody’s downgrade and the inevitable remaking of the world post Covid-19 all suggest that we are unlikely to return to the South Africa and world before the outbreak of the disease. Across the world of work, for instance, the post Covid-19 world may hasten technological solutions in the production floor that displace more people from the workplace.

The local banking sector has already paved the way into this trajectory with increased innovations in online banking that have resulted in retrenchments. Here, as is likely to be the case elsewhere in the world, it will exacerbate the socioeconomic plight of the most vulnerable, put social cohesion to a test and increase temperatures in the political sphere.

Across the Atlantic, realist and liberal intellectual traditions that have historically sponsored the American imperium are engaged in spirited discourses of the Covid-19-induced crisis in search of empirical vindication for their respective theories.

Their output ranges from counsels that seek to illuminate policy makers on the value of shared gains in global economic governance and cooperation, to domesticating hitherto internationalised productive capacities in anticipation of increased socalled great power rivalries.

These factions should not be allowed to shape the post Covid-19 world by themselves; other regions of the world must also take their rightful positions in the new order to come.

Inasmuch as the burden of disease affects poor countries and their similarly situated inhabitants the most, international arrangements conceived by the powerful often benefit their progenitors. Those are, indeed, the ways and workings of the world.

But the world desperately needs a reconfiguration and here we must commence a national process which envisions a post Covid-19 world with respect to such issues as may include the:

• Policies required for economic recovery;
• Global political and economic governance in the context of emerging geopolitical shifts;
• Impact on an already stretched social fabric;
• Strengthening our domestic institutional and continental capacity to respond to disease outbreak as well as their economic impact; and
• Fit-for-purpose roles and responsibilities of government, business, labour, other civil society sectors and the citizenry in the reconstruction process.

Lastly, since the lockdown, parents of schoolgoing children have had to contend with improperly occupied young ones. From the ravages of the disease has come greater clarity about the importance of online learning in our schooling system and institutions of higher learning.

Here, the challenge is less of the technology, which already exists and can be mobilised in a relative short space of time. The larger challenge is one of content development and the necessary support from the educators.

These and other workstreams need not wait for the country and the world to recover from the disease and its effects. They need to begin now, as of yesterday.

Mukoni Ratshitanga.

• Ratshitanga is a consultant, social and political commentator. (mukoni@interlinked.co.za)

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