We ignore the poor at our peril

A crowd gathers to collect food parcels from the Supplier Development Initiatives and the City of Joburg on Friday. File picture: Bhekikhaya Mabaso African News Agency (ANA)

A crowd gathers to collect food parcels from the Supplier Development Initiatives and the City of Joburg on Friday. File picture: Bhekikhaya Mabaso African News Agency (ANA)

Published Apr 19, 2020

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Albert Einstein said: “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser and better political insight has a hard time winning its way as long as there is little prospect of filling the stomach.”

Money, like power, can corrupt. It can make them insensitive to the needs of the underlings; and lead them to believe in their ill-gotten right to decide who lives or dies, who is worthy of human dignity and who is not.

Power or money can also corrupt the have-nots, but only because a cornered rat will bite the cat.

There have been reports of health workers, informal traders and other poor South Africans defying the lockdown regulations because of economic reasons. Unable to stay at home with crying, starving family members in overcrowded spaces without basic amenities, they go out to hunt to survive, not disobey President Cyril Ramaphosa.

A Cabinet minister also fell foul of the restrictions. While the former got tear gas, rubber bullets, arrests or humiliation, the latter got a two-month suspension with half pay.

The tweeting president across the Atlantic instructed his government to stop funding the World Health Organization (WHO). He blames it for spreading Covid-19 by believing China too much and not imposing a global travel ban. This, from someone who disbanded his own pandemic team at the White House because “as a businessman” they were not needed. He is suspending the funding of the one organisation tackling the virus with no precedent.

Everything to this man is about power and money; let us not emulate him.

“The US contributes $400 million a year, versus China who contributes $40m,” he said. He overlooked to mention that China also owns US government bonds, meaning it finances America.

If the WHO made mistakes in managing the Covid-19 outbreak (and who did not!), it deserves more resources, not less. If ever there was a time for the US to show its muscle as a superpower, it is now.

It could offer to lead some of the WHO functions to improve its effectiveness; you know, the way it took over the fight to stop the proliferation of “weapons of mass destruction” and waged a needless war on Iraq.

Our ability to fashion solutions to a crisis is impaired by our bias towards the rich and powerful. We have been too concerned about solving a health problem - containing the spread of the virus - instead of holistically helping as many South Africans as possible to protect their livelihoods by staying healthy. 

The first approach gives disproportionate control of the Covid-19 discourse and response to the hard-working health minister, enthusiastic police minister and the skop, skiet en donder elements of

our army.

We do not need to choose one approach over the other.

The rationale of the lockdown is not in question; but it is not a sufficient response unless coupled with a phased-in return to full economic activity while (not after) flattening the curve. Our insistence on everyone staying safe at home whereas the majority’s existence is unsafe due to economic - including health - reasons will fuel a rebellion of the downtrodden. The urgent obvious choice is ours.

* Victor Kgomoeswana is the author of Africa is Open for Business; media commentator and public speaker on African business affairs - Twitter Handle: @VictorAfrica

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

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