Let’s do ubuntu for broad-based survival
H— no, not a sequel. This is for real. It ’ s going to be one hell of a thing, this total shutdown, when it starts in the early hours of Friday.
These circumstances, up to now only captured in movies, may seem at first like the start of an adventure that’ll be tough, but we’ll all come out on the other side stronger. Like the build-up to a father-and-son school camp-out on the rugby field, before the weather changes dramatically.
We won’t all come out of this together, but I do think we’ll cope and learn and survive as a nation. We’ve certainly seen able leadership come to the fore from our president, Cyril
Ramaphosa. Let’s hope; let’s see.
There is a huge difference between wanting to be at home and being forced to. In the normal course of events Sundays at home without plans are rare and treasured. Supervised relaxation isn’t.
Some things will be the same for all of us, regardless of our LSM classifications. You can’t go to work. How cool is that! It starts off as a treat — lazing in bed in the morning with the papers, loafing about the house until lunchtime in your pyjamas, then out for lunch ... Oops, there’ll be no out for lunch. Soon enough that gets boring. After boring it becomes restrictive, invasive, then downright annoying — like a month of continuous snow.
You’re imprisoned in your own house, surrounded, literally, by all the people you love, including those brats we drop off at school in the morning. Cabin fever turns into suffocation (never mind those couples who can barely make it through the three hours of awake time they actually have to share every day).
At some point you’ll start wondering if you have any purpose, if they actually want you back at work, if they’ll miss you at all. It’ll get depressing..
But it doesn’t have to be like that. It could instead be catchup and fix-up time — from cluttered garages to fragile relationships. Do those rather.
It won’t be the same for everyone. It’s all very well opening your fridge to take out a bottle of cold, freshly squeezed orange juice to wash down a pre-prepared Greek salad from Woollies. Clean hands, clean kitchen, running water, regular garbage disposal, sanitation, all taken for granted.
But what if you don’t have a fridge, or orange juice or any of that other stuff? What if there are a lot of you in a small space unavoidably’breathing spread. That s where each others’ air as you try to sleep at night? If the virus arrives, that ’ s where it will take hold and desperation and anger replace boredom and limited travel.
All of our resources, our energy, capital and simple human kindness must be selflessly directed at the bottom of the triangle, the broad base that is the evidence of our economic inequality. Now is the time for transfer, in the name of broad-based survival, let alone wealth creation at the top of that pyramid.
A lot has already been committed, thank you. Now let’s get that benefit (that rescue) down to the individual in need. Let this “quantitative easing” be placed at the doorsteps of our people, not trapped within the bureaucracy of the institutions charged with its disbursement. Force it through the distribution channels, into the houses, into the mouths and into the bloodstream of our population.
I think we will pull it off, but if there ever was a time to ask what you can do for your country, and not what it can do for you, it is now. Ubuntu!
At last, at last, at last we have common purpose, even if it is only to defeat this indiscriminate enemy.
Barnes, a former SA Post Office CEO, has had more than 30 years of experience in various capacities in the financial sector.