By Takura Zhangazha*
The calendar year 2021 should have taught the world in
general and Zimbabweans in particular a great many new lessons about our shared
common destiny as humanity. Not least because
the Covid 19 pandemic did not relent and emerged with various political,
social, economic and technological end effects that we are still not clear
about how to equitably redress. Or the
ongoing challenges of climate change that are no longer just scientific arguments
but increasingly lived realities across the globe. Particularly in the Global South.
In this brief write up I will however only focus on my own country
of origin, Zimbabwe and the lessons that we have refused to learn. Or at best
only arrived at by default in this year that has come to an end.
And there are at least three of these ‘refused lessons’ we
may have refused to learn that I will focus on.
The first being that even within the context of a global
pandemic and a national vaccination drive, we still sought, as is our current
social culture to politicise this global challenge. Continued narratives about how Zimbabwe was
not going to able to mitigate the pandemic as well as other countries through
to other narratives about vaccine efficacy by way of origin (SinoVac vs Johnson
and Johnson for example) were widely
accepted conversations.
The tragic passing on of many of our citizens, despite all
the pain should also have pointed us to our under appreciation of the value,
right and principle of access to public
health for all. Instead we expanded
private health services and introduced our own form of local Covid 19 treatment
‘apartheid’ or inequality. Even though
in most cases the end results were tragically the same because whether rich or
poor, all of us have suffered a Covid 19 related loss of a loved one. Or if we got it and survived it, we are still
counting our material losses or our appreciating more our own luck/religion
Beyond public health we also had again, a sort of Covid 19
related inequality around access to education.
With those in government schools at primary and secondary levels of education
experiencing slower school calendars and less teacher attention because they
could not access online platforms and electricity.
Again this was the same with actual access to
livelihoods/jobs. While we made jokes
about how for example, those in the urban were migrating back to the rural at
the extended height of the pandemic the reality was that both spheres of our
lives were negatively affected. With
those in the urban, including Diaspora, facing challenges of sending
remittances to their rural folks due to limited employment. And those in the rural having to shoulder the
burden of taking in their kin who were having to come back home for economic
respite from urban rents, rates while under lockdown.
Secondly, as an unlearnt lesson in 2021, and again because of the high levels of political
polarisation in our society, we also did not fully understand the urgency of
new approaches to how our society is holistically run. And this is as things/issues relate to
democracy, human rights and the best public interest. When faced with such a crisis as Covid 19,
there should have been greater public knowledge and understanding about key
events as they occurred, greater ideological perspectives (including the reigning
in of private capital from profiteering from this) on public health and other issues even though
we were under lockdown. What we sort of had instead were all sorts of dogmatic
narratives and stubborn insistence that things could still be done in the same
way, at least politically. Even though
we could not meet physically. And even
as we suspended physical electoral processes we hid under the cloak of the
pandemic to retain political power at varying levels (civil society, churches,
political parties, social clubs, beef committees, among many others). This is despite the fact that in select urban
and per-urban instances we could do online meetings in one form or the
other. Or even, with lockdown
regulations permitting hold limited physical meetings.
The third key issue I would like to raise is the contradiction
of not wanting to re-imagine a new future.
Two years of a pandemic, and a global one for that matter is a very
serious occurrence in the lives of our people.
In 2021 we have retained a desire for what I consider the ‘routine’. Or even a return to a preferred ‘normalcy’ of
life (though in Zimbabwe that’s a difficult proposition.) Our re-imagining of our societal future would be
one that is ensconced in neoliberal assumptions of ‘innovation’ and less embedded
in our democratic values and intentions to make our society much more equitable
for everyone. Based on the lessons learnt from the pandemic. As it is, we are more about the figures
(number of infections, deaths) than we are about the urgency of ensuring that
we are always partly and democratically, accountably ready for any such pandemics
in the future. Particularly with regard
to creating public health service, education, transport and sanitation systems
that are fair, accessible and affordable to all our citizens. Be they in the rural or urban areas where
they make their livelihoods.
In conclusion, 2021 was initially a year in which we had
placed great hope that we would be over the current pandemic. As indicated earlier, there is probably no single
Zimbabwean with friends and family or individually who has not been affected by
Covid19. Yet we still need, while using
our best science to mitigate it, still need to look at the bigger societal
context and future on how to learn lessons that build an equitable society.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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