COVID-19: What ‘lies’ ahead?

By Tim Mutsekwa

Greetings to you all. l hope that you and your loved ones are safe during this difficult time of lockdowns and pandemics. These are strange times.

Closely following the political unfolding’s in Zimbabwe, it uncannily reminded me of an interview l watched last week of the ‘new’ Dru Hill [the band]. Jazz, Woody Rock and Nokio, a trio of dark-skinned brothers, had been replaced by a trio of light-skinned crooners from Baltimore.

The exact words that popped into my mind watching this was: ‘what in the name of light skinned Vivian from Fresh Prince of Bel Air is this? ’’It was like the third instalment of the Hangover movie, some things just don’t work. You know you have gone too far.

Across the world, countries are in a race to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The way we live our lives has been drastically curtailed and the news cycle seems filled only with endless tales of disease, unease and death.

COVID-19 reminds the world of its own contradictions. We are indeed living in an era of paradoxes. The earth is certainly round, but something, somewhere, is not right.

Humankind is constantly making progress in all directions, pushing back the limits of science and technology every day, including the conquest of space. Meanwhile, on earth, there is a shortage of masks, test kits, personal protective equipment, beds, ventilators; so many products, materials and equipment that are crucial for the treatment of patients and protection of health workers.

The virus spares no one, whether Boris Johnson, Prince Charles, Sophie Trudeau or Tom Hanks. It also does not spare the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

Most rich countries have struggled to respond to the outbreak. African ones have fewer medics and less kit. Social distancing is far harder in overcrowded slums. Lockdowns could increase poverty and hunger. Nor do most African countries have the money to tide people and companies over.

As the privileged middle classes raced to food stores, bought yoga mats and home gym equipment, talked about catching up on reading and working online; in other parts of our country, the news of the pandemic was only just trickling through as witnessed by the crowds at places like Mbare musika. Those living in townships, squeezed cheek by jowl into intolerable living spaces, do not consume news in the way the privileged class does. Survival means living from one day to the next.

The pandemic also continues to show up the spatial divisions within our society. It is far easier to instruct someone to remain locked down in a home, but it is not so easy for someone in an overcrowded shack without any access to water and electricity to do the same.

Persuading slum-dwellers to stay in one-room shacks with many relatives will be tougher than getting people in New York or London to stay on the sofa watching Netflix. And few can work from home.

In townships across our country, life is lived in the open, on the streets and in a community in much more vivid ways than in the suburbs. It is also what makes social distancing tricky for people to practise. In the past days, the poor have been unhelpfully demonised as they have tried to go about their lives mostly genuinely oblivious to the danger of the pandemic. Alongside that there has also been the usual wilful intent to break the law among some.

For the majority of Zimbabweans, daily life has always been the dystopia looming over us, except without the hysterics. If the saying goes that, “a civilization is measured by how well it treats its weakest members,” then Zimbabwe has long since condemned its weakest to an indefinite, tragic suffering.

The progression of the virus will not be stopped by brute force. Rules cannot be enforced by might but rather with people’s consent. How one gains the trust and consent of the citizenry is the salient and urgent question at this point.

Now is also the time for perennially absent ward councillors to start doing the jobs they are paid to do and connect with their constituencies creatively. Community policing forums could also contribute to improved messaging. The lockdown has to have the buy-in of the citizenry if we are going to be successful in “flattening the curve”.

Our futures are inextricably linked, and the coronavirus pandemic does not discriminate. What we do in the suburbs affects someone in the township and vice versa.

All breaches are equally problematic. As Zimbabwe nears the end of second week of lockdown, the 21-day period seems a painfully long prospect. Resilience is what it is all about now and ensuring that the poor are not affected in disproportionate ways.

The burden on health-care systems from covid-19 could impede treatment of other diseases. Studies of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa suggest that about as many people died because they could not get treatment for malaria, HIV and tuberculosis as from Ebola itself. Others died from being unable to give birth safely. Suppressing outbreaks of Lassa fever in Nigeria and measles in Congo could be hampered by the diversion of resources to covid-19.

Governments may also have a hard time convincing their citizens to take the new virus seriously. Fake news is one reason. Dodgy cures and conspiracy theories are spreading on WhatsApp groups, which typically have more members in Africa than elsewhere.

In Congo the virus is seen as a “mzungu” (white person) disease. Some Ethiopians see their country as blessed and therefore protected. More than a quarter of Nigerians say they are immune, most commonly because they are “a child of God”.

Religion may be doing more to spread the disease than stop it. Senegal was slow to stop pilgrims from travelling to the holy city of Touba, despite an outbreak. A Christian gathering in South Africa has been linked to another outbreak. Thousands still attend megachurches in Nigeria.

Although many pastors and imams are spreading the gospel of handwashing, others are talking nonsense. Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia have promoted quack “cures” involving garlic, lemon and ginger. Prices of these foodstuffs have risen by more than 200%, and fights have broken out in markets over them.

Many African leaders have been swift to ban religious meetings. Some churches are streaming services online. But this is not the case in Tanzania, where President John Magufuli has refused to close churches, saying: “That’s where there is true healing. Corona is the devil and it cannot survive in the body of Jesus.”

African authorities will probably struggle to shut down cities to the extent seen in Europe, never mind China. For the moment, though, they are trying to combine restrictions on movement with some steps to ease the economic pain.

What will ultimately determine the fate of leaders on the continent, though, is how they combine their direct response to the virus with mitigating its vast indirect costs. African countries face an unenviable task, which they cannot address alone. In trying to “flatten the curve” of the number of infected, they risk crushing their people.

Let us come down to earth and return to the wisdom of the elders, as invited by the absurdly talented Cheikh Hamidou Kane, who, in his best-selling novel L’Aventure Ambiguë, published 59 years ago, delivered this premonitory message:

“We did not have the same past … but we will have the same future, strictly speaking … the time of singular destinies is over … no one can live on self-preservation alone.”  (L’Aventure Ambiguë, page 92).

This means that any nation-state, whatever its power and means, can no longer be self-sufficient. In the face of global challenges, we all need one another, especially when our common vulnerabilities are added to our individual frailties.

As a wise old African saying has it: “The rainbow owes its beauty to the varied shades of its colours.”

I shall leave it here. Have a wonderful weekend, till next time,and please be safe.

Tim Mutsekwa (Political Science and International Relations [University of Greenwich], Secretary for Party Business & Investments [MDC UK & Ireland], Twitter : @tsumekwa