Solidarity one of pandemic’s first victims
It’s probably too soon to even begin to consider the effect and legacy of the coronavirus pandemic. After all, the world is told, the worst is yet to come — the peak of the disease is still weeks away, especially for the developing world.
However, some of the elements of Covid-19’s worst legacy are beginning to manifest around the world. This might just be what the disease bequeaths to the world years after it’s gone, if policymakers aren’t careful.
Since February, pessimists have been writing the obituary of life as we know it: the end of handshakes, hugs, the world of work, ways of work, and so on. Other than lives that are being destroyed, the other blow Covid-19 has visited on the world has been on solidarity. This human trait, which was already in scarce supply, will take years to recover.
Instead of humanity uniting to fight its biggest challenge in a century, it seems the world’s nations are turning away from one another and responding by launching piecemeal, national campaigns against the disease.
Even before the outbreak of Covid-19, the US was involved in a campaign of what author Thomas Wright calls retrenchment — a withdrawal from its global humanitarian, economic and military commitments. Covid-19 has likely accelerated this recoil.
This year started on a promising note for the global economy when the US paused its trade war with China after signing a truce — including a commitment by China to buy more American products to reduce the trade deficit. This positive sentiment was cut short by the outbreak of Covid19. Instead of sending the US’s best medical scientists to assist China to contain the epidemic, US President Donald Trump indulged in inflammatory rhetoric, describing the virus as the “Chinese virus” or “Kung Flu”, as one of his administration’s officials is known to have said.
China’s response to Trump’s taunts has been equally childish, with some in Beijing spreading fake news that Covid-19 was brought by US soldiers to block China’s seemingly unstoppable march to becoming the world’s biggest economy.
Now that the disease has hit the US, Trump has been found wanting, without China to blame. He has even found himself at war with US governors such as Andrew Cuomo over the speed and adequacy of the federal government’s support to the states. Trump is too proud a man to ask for help from anyone, let alone China.
But it’s not only the world’s two largest economies that have succumbed to Covid-19’s blow to global solidarity. The world’s multilateral institutions — the UN, IMF, the G-20, the World Trade Organization, the EU, the AU, the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) bloc and the African Development Bank — have been as lethargic as national governments in their response.
Even within states themselves, solidarity is at its weakest point. Covid-19 merely exposed this. The Covid-19 prevention message — stay at home, protect yourself and save others — has fuelled the weakening of human solidarity. In this calculus, the poor and most vulnerable — those who live in overpopulated areas such as informal settlements — are an after-thought and have yet to be fully accommodated in government shelters. In SA, despite the early imposition of a 21-day nationwide lockdown, it’s taken hard-core civil society activists to ensure the poor aren’t left behind.
Economic nationalism is on the rise too. For example, Nigeria’s initial response to Covid-19 was to threaten a ban on imports of sanitisers. There is also a temptation among governments to save only their own citizens and economic operators during this crisis.
The other temptation, a spinoff from Covid-19, has been for governments to clamp down on privacy and other freedoms, such as the flow of information, in the name of saving lives during this health emergency.
China used technology — artificial intelligence and facial recognition — to stop the spread of the virus when it first broke out. It required no special decree or legislation to do this.
Other governments are now seeking to do the same. This is a frightening prospect for other jurisdictions, including SA.
It’s hardly a year since South Africans discovered how the country’s intelligence services were being used by the governing party’s various factions to advance intraparty political agendas, instead of protecting the citizens of the republic.
It would be a great pity if Covid-19 succeeded in bequeathing unto the world a dark legacy of disunity, distrust, prejudice and stigma against those affected and infected, and a world of “every man for himself and God for us all”. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
What the world needs now is stronger human, political and economic solidarity, the free flow of information, sharing of resources, co-ordinated economic and medical action against the virus, compassion for those infected and affected, humility to ask for help, and support for the vulnerable.
With the US retrenching itself from world affairs, perhaps it will be left to China to step up to save lives and livelihoods.
Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is executive for strategy and public affairs at the Small Business Institute.