By Futhi Mtoba
Delivering the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture last July, United Nations’ Secretary-General António Guterres spoke of how Covid-19 exposed the fragility of our world and how we have neglected of the inequality crisis.
Against the spirit of Nelson Mandela, he said, the world had “ignored for decades: inadequate health systems, gaps in social protection, structural inequalities, environmental degradation, the climate crisis”.
In doing so, the world had posed the “greatest risk to the most vulnerable: those living in poverty, older people as well as people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday acknowledged some of these realities. He once again referred to his fynbos metaphor, commending the resilience of South Africans even after being burned and left desolate for months, yet “when the autumn rains return, the seeds germinate”.
This resilience is an asset that we should all harness in 2021 to start tackling some of our problems.
Of the nearly one-and-a-half million people infected by the virus and the more than 45 000 who have died, our inequality as a society - in South Africa and the world -glares intensely.
Oxfam released a document titled “The Inequality Virus” few weeks ago. “It took just nine months for the fortunes of the (world’s) top 1,000 billionaires to return to their pre-pandemic highs, while for the world’s poorest, recovery could take more than a decade”, according to the report.
When the president cited a sharp decline in growth and a significant increase in unemployment to 30.8 percent (1.7 million fewer people employed) and a 6% contraction of the GDP in the third quarter of 2020, he further articulated the reality of our income inequality.
Those in the lower rungs of our economy, the black majority, are more concerned about dying of starvation, of foreclosure by banks for unpaid loans, instalments and mortgages. To worsen their plight, their children had to delay returning to school to contain the virus, but the lack of access to fast affordable Internet access has meant that their learning progress is already behind that of their well-off counterparts.
SMMEs will take longer to get back on their feet; then struggle with the public perception, which is skewed against those who failed in business. On the contrary, these people ought to be commended for their tenacity and for the experience they gained from their failed ventures.
By the time the vaccine would have been administered and we perhaps attain herd immunity, some of those who lost their jobs, businesses due to the lockdown might never recover.
At least there were additional grant payments to 18 million people, lifting over 5 million above the food poverty line; and over R1.3 billion provided in support for SMMEs. These are not interventions to be scoffed at.
However, the extent of the damage and the time it will take to recover will still be too ghastly. I look forward to the R100-billion Infrastructure Fund highlighted by the president finding practical expression in the Budget Speech to follow.
This will reignite economic development with many positive spin-offs, including the empowerment of women. The other promising take-out is SA Connect, a programme to roll out broadband to schools, hospitals, police stations and other government facilities. If these two succeed, with sufficient emphasis on procuring from local suppliers as prescribed by the president, we could be on our way to restoration in due course.
This hinges on the successful combating of corruption and a more deliberate bias towards the inclusion of women and the general eradication of inequality accentuated by this pandemic and the lockdown.
Futhi Mtoba is Co-Founder of TEACH South Africa, Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Former Chairman of Deloitte Southern Africa and Past of President of BUSA.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Star or Independent Media
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