Friday 15 May 2020

Time, Mortality and our African Covid19 Context.


By Takura Zhangazha*

The World Health Organization (WHO) Africa regional office recently issued a statement that the continent should expect more Covid19 infections.  

As reported in the media,  it estimates that over a quarter of a billion of us Africans will eventually be infected.  Though, again according to WHO fewer of us may die than in other continents due to what they consider our younger population as well as our ‘different lifestyles’.  The latter point being with reference to demographic issues such as population density and/or nature of settlements (urban or rural). 

The report commissioned by the WHO is essentially scientific.  So there would be no need to argue about any implied ‘othering’ of Africans. Even if again, where and when it comes to pandemics on the African continent, its target audience is likely those that can provide further direct support to prevent the spread of Covid19.  And the African Union as well as its member states to try and establish better long term approaches to combating Covid 19.

What is however interesting has been our reaction as Africans to this sort of information.  Not just by way of what our governments decide to do or tell us. Either as advised by WHO or global philanthropists. 

What is in vogue, at least to me at least, is how we are reacting to Covid19 stories that would otherwise be considered apocalyptic.  Or if in anyway what we have always considered to be the passage of natural time/life/ and mortality is any more different than before.

These would be partly philosophical, somewhat anthropological and possibly religious considerations. As a blogger my own angle to these issues is more self-reflective than academic or based on specific research.

When the pandemic was officially confirmed by WHO earlier this year, its danger appeared to some as distant to the African continent. And in some cases it gave rise to social media motivated/distributed rascism against people in the global east. From the viewpoint of not only us as Africans but also as inspired by the same as it came from the global north and in particular the current president of the USA. 

And in this, a mistaken perception we have had of our mortality in the context of Covid 19, was that it could not kill Africans.  And in this we unwittingly did not see how we as already historically ‘othered’, were wrongly othering ‘others’ in the global east and global north.  

We now know the reality of the pandemic including the recent official WHO predictions of its potentially devastating effect on the continent. A development which should immediately compel us to reflect deeply on our own context and how better to address the challenge.

Sadly, we may not be up to the task in the fullness of the challenge it represents. And this is where it becomes more complicated. Our perceptions and fears of Covid19 are viewed, by us, from the prism of the global north.  Not only on the basis of anticipation of a vaccine or cure being derived from there but also to the extent of limiting our contextual search for local solutions to the same. And not just in relation to scientific treatment but also charting a new approach to how we re-structure and revolutionalise our public health services and attendant social welfare systems for the benefit of our majority poor. 

What our governments are inclined toward are public-private frameworks enabled by lockdowns in aide of what we now know to be ‘disaster capitalism’. 

In this, we are still not optimally prepared for the storm that is predicted to be coming.  And a decent number of us would know that where you are warned of a pending storm it is preferable to be prepared for it than to hope that those that predicted it were wrong.

What we should not do is to resign ourselves to what can only be described as an assumed African historical fate in the wake of global pandemics. Or even wars. That is assumptions that it is coming and therefore inevitable.  We instead require greater urgency and people centered agency.  Beyond what we have been accustomed to as either philanthropy or anticipation of the benevolent hand motivated by colonial legacy responsibility for the ‘natives’.

The passage of time and perceptions, including our pessimistic own, of African mortality should be something that we consider in rejuvenated progressive ways. As opposed to taking the route of accepting an ‘inevitabilism’ (I borrow this term from Soshana Zuboff’s great work on surveillance capitalism) as of colonial, post-colonial and neo-liberal old.  

While we may not be able to build hospitals in a week, the fact of the matter is that we must build them with urgency in order to prevent this attitude of ‘inevitabilism.’

As cited above the WHO Africa regional office indicates that Covid19 may be with us on the continent for a more foreseeable period than potentially elsewhere.  

One cannot argue with their scientific findings.  We know the import of the passage of time. What we may need to think about is challenging the perception of inevitability more robustly and with the majority poor in mind.  This may mean even seeking to re-mould our African states beyond the profit motivated expectations of globalized and financialised capital.  We need to understand the import of Covid19 on the African continent as outlined by science. But in doing so we must keep the people in mind. Together with the urgent quest for a new African welfare state that while struggling sets a new path to a progressive people driven global world order.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

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