Guerrilla warfare and sabotage is the call
On Sunday evening, our president, sombre and tired, laid out his government’s plans to mitigate the impact of Covid-19. It was a reassuring show of leadership and outlined excellent strategies. But it was also a message from a government effectively in exile. The novel coronavirus is here — in our offices, schools and universities, in our places of worship, in our homes — and now the battle falls to every one of us.
Cyril Ramaphosa spoke of sweeping changes to the way we live in SA. Some of what he said was startlingly bold, in stark and impressive contrast to the sleepwalking fatalism of Boris Johnson’s government or the petulant floundering of Donald Trump.
For all its scope, however, the campaign outlined is not a frontal, massed assault on the virus. It can’t be, because this is an enemy that thrives on confrontation. What is required of us, instead, is guerrilla warfare: a scorched-earth, fighting retreat.
In the weeks, and months ahead, each of us must become a fighter in the resistance, delaying and sabotaging the virus’s advance, slowing the rate of new infections so that our doctors and nurses have the time and the beds to bring the virus to heel.
Every one of us must set fire to its path, denying it the territory and easy victories it has won in Iran and Italy, so that our country’s employers, both large and small, can survive without having to resort to economic triage.
The virus has marched across six continents in a few weeks. Now we must fight for every city, every block, every home. If we are going to get sick, it must be despite our most ferocious efforts. If many of us are going to get this thing, we cannot get it at the same time. We must give it nothing.
It is easy to fight for ourselves and for our families, but right now our most urgent fight must be on behalf of others. Young and healthy South Africans must fight for those who are elderly or immunecompromised, citizens who already live up against hard, unyielding medical realities that give them no room for negotiation. South Africans with more money and more choices must fight for the millions whose poverty leaves them uniquely’exposed: who can t self-isolate compatriots or work from home; who can’t stockpile groceries; who must, for as long as they can, stand in queues and then crowd into taxis and buses to avoid becoming destitute.
We must all hold the line as long as we can, and we hold it by delaying and denying the virus. We kill its scouts by washing our hands, and by sneezing or coughing into the crooks of our arms. We explode its supply lines by avoiding contact with others. We starve it, and as we starve it we slow it, and buy each other time. A pandemic is an exponential event, which means we must push hardest now, at the start of the curve. Every infection you prevent today is a hundred that won’t break out next week and a thousand that won’t explode next month. Every hour you spend at home rather than with friends is a thousand jobs saved once the pandemic retreats.
How we spend those hours can also be powerful. As we pull back into our homes we will inevitably spend more time online, which means we will find ourselves adrift in a toxic soup of misinformation, disinformation and outright conspiracy theory. Just as we wash our hands, we must scrub our social media and sanitise our contact with the internet.
More importantly, we must politely disregard those who are telling us that a global lockdown is an overreaction. I’m sure some of them mean well, but pandemic experts have made the same point for some days now, namely that the most certain way to be overrun by a virus is to wait until you’re sure you’re not overreacting.
I don’t know how we keep small businesses alive. Domestic workers and freelancers are seeing their livelihoods evaporate this week. Soon, it will be anyone who works in a bar, restaurant or hotel. The damage will be great, and if and when the state patches together a safety net, it will be inadequate.
Which is why, even as we get into the routine of resistance, we should prepare for wild days. Last week was an age ago. Next week, things will look unrecognisably different. The numbers will probably start looking frightening quite soon.
But have courage. Keep fighting. Because this will end. And if we contest every inch, we will help end it sooner rather than later.
Wash your hands. Selfisolate. Give the virus nothing. Vive la résistance!
IT IS EASY TO FIGHT FOR OURSELVES AND FOR OUR FAMILIES, BUT RIGHT NOW OUR MOST URGENT FIGHT MUST BE ON BEHALF OF OTHERS