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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