We aren’t really in this Covid-19 fight together

When coronavirus started spreading like wildfire across the planet, it was clear the pandemic was no respecter of status, nationality or race.

It has been a great leveller and it gave us the sense that “we are in this together”. Well that “we are the world” sentiment hasn’t lasted very long. US President Donald Trump has effectively “nationalised” the drug remdesivir, which is produced by American pharmaceutical company Gilead and which has been shown to be highly effective in treatment of serious Covid-19 patients by reducing recovery time by up to a third.

In fairness, when it comes to the health of a nation (and the people who will be potentially voting for you later this year), it makes perfect sense for Trump to pull up the drawbridge and keep the rest of the world behind his isolationist moat. But what it also does is underline the huge gulf between the “north” and the “south” – or the developed and the developing world.

The resources of the south largely made the north what it is today – and, whether you like it or not, the after-effects of colonialism, like those of apartheid, are still with us. This should serve as a wake-up call to developing nations that they are on their own and the only way to compete, or be taken seriously, is through cooperation.

Yet all the attempts to achieve that sort of unity have so far been wrecked on the rocks of distrust, incompetence and corruption. SA could have been a leader in industrialising Africa and in producing its own world-beating medicines.

That hasn’t happened because our politicians and many civil servants share the same sort of approach to life as Donald Trump: I want it all and I won’t stop until I have it all.

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