Only ubuntu will see us out of this sad medical crime against humanity
HISTORY has an uncanny tendency to repeat itself.
South Africa emerges from a period in which it was antirevolutionary, writing about roses.
Creatives risked life and limb documenting untold suffering visited upon humans by other humans.
Unlike the deafening silence that marks our final journeys today, then funerals had morphed into rallying points as gallant compatriots tumbled like confetti into untimely graves.
Paradoxically, apartheid became a swear word that integrated humanity against that hateful system.
Its stubborn existence, though, couldn’t withstand the united effort of the world.
Today, Covid-19 has become the ‘Greatest Leveller’.
Its reach and impact knows no boundaries as it consumes everything on its path. Unlike the olden days though, the scribes’ pens refuse to give name to the new reality.
Like stillborn and crippled babies after nuclear bombs of yesteryears, creatives’ words are stunted and can’t capture the moment in its ghastliest.
In contrast to jail memoirs that not only chronicled apartheid’s brutality but also galvanised multitudes to action, today the pages are blank.
The beast at the door seems to have muted people of letters.
Apartheid is reborn as silence in theatres, and stadia echo apartheid’s stranglehold on creativity.
Its reincarnation can be seen in the hypocrisy of the rich nations who, instead of embracing humanity, hoard the vaccines
– in what is called vaccine nationalism. Poorer nations that are recipients of the disease are left to fend for themselves in a pandemic that’s not of their own making.
Meanwhile, the globe-trotters who spread the disease in the first place, cozily watch the catastrophe on the screens with glasses of whisky in their hands and life-saving jabs on their arms.
It is disgraceful that this medical apartheid is allowed to take root with the world bodies watching.
To worsen the situation, the sponsored vaccine-hesitancy we witness only entrenches already existing polarities between the rich and the poor nations.
It’s time the former, whose wealth was built on the blood and sweat of the poor, learns to collaborate in this dark hour because only ubuntu will see us out of this abyss.
Co-operation, as opposed to individualism, is what is required to defeat exceptionalism.
We should all remember, apartheid was a crime against humanity then, as it is a crime against humanity today.
We deserve better than this brazen act, if we are to promote global social compact.
Biko’s words ring true that, ‘The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa - giving the world a more human face’.