By: Siyanda Pali
In a 1930 letter to his sister-in-law Tatiana, Gramsci once stated that he liked, "to have a concrete interlocutor or adversary." He alluded to the "polemic nature" of his intellectual framework in its entirety. Never has such a statement been so ironic for a people living in such an age as this.
The American-Canadian Economist Kenneth Galbraith once stated that," The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." That irreverent notion has probably never been so clearly illustrated as has been the case over the past 2 years. The Covid-19 pandemic has altered life as we know it. So illuminating has been the experience that this plague will go down in history as one of the most significant events of the 21st century.
Milky Way Galaxy (Hubble Space Telescope)
In November of 2019, I moved to Beijing, China with much aplomb and optimism. It was very much a summer month in South Africa, with its typical, frequent scorchers. However, just a few hours later, I had arrived to a chilly, snow-laden Beijing. I had never experienced such icy temperatures prior to my arrival there, so it's safe to say that my body had to adjust to this winter wonderland. Little did I know what awaited me just a few months along the path.
The Chinese Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, tentatively taking place between January and February of each year, is one of the biggest holidays in Mainland China. In fact, it's so gigantic there is no greater movement of people anywhere else on earth, with the holiday being dubbed the "world's largest human migration". About 385 million Chinese people made the trip to various cities within Mainland China in 2018. There is no doubt that similar numbers were on the cards for the year 2020, with many Chinese workers and students eager to spend the week-long holiday period with loved ones. However, in the background was brewing a crisis so devastating that the government was encouraging citizens to shelve such plans for fear of contagion going from bad to worse.
There were murmurs of an epidemic which had gripped Wuhan, the capital city of China's centrally-located Hebei province. This respiratory disease, first detected around 31 December 2019, had such cataclysmic consequences that all of Wuhan was placed on lockdown. The death toll began to climb. Within a matter of days, lives were altered forever. The bustling city of Beijing, boasting a population of more than 20 million people, was almost reduced to pin-drop silence. Before we knew it, we would not be working on company premises following the Spring Festival, We would become experts at working online.
By the time the rest of the world reckoned with rising infection and mortality rates, we in China were already well-adept with this new reality. A part of this reality was the tsunami of massive lay-offs from companies which were simply crippled by, among other things, an inability to generate additional revenue in the prevailing conditions at the time, and having to adapt in such circumstances. The International Labour Organisation estimates that some 81 million jobs were lost in the Asia Pacific region alone as a result of Covid-19. Another aspect of this new reality was dealing with ruthless propaganda, which started to blame foreigners for the Coronavirus. Black people were especially mistreated, irrationally so, with some experiencing incessant police harassment, point-blank refusals for admissions at hotels, refusals to access basic services such as buses, forced evictions, with some being forced to find accommodation under the winds and rains of heaven, to sleep under bridges. Despite most imported cases being from Chinese citizens who had returned from abroad, some Africans or people of African descent were subjected to forced testing in 2020,despite having no travel history outside China, or interaction with infected people.
The impact of Covid-19 has also been significant globally. Nations such as Italy, Spain, the UK, and the USA were dealt a crushing blow by Covid-19, as their health systems were often strained to maximum capacity. The loss of life was and still is the greatest tragedy of all.
The fallout both within China and abroad displayed idiosyncrasies of each nation, battling the same problem. A prime example of this was a test of whether one of the key pillars necessary for access to truthful and timeous information, free speech, was indeed on solid ground. Two cases in China specifically, those of Dr. Li Wenliang, a former Ophthalmologist at the Wuhan Central Hospital, as well as that of Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer and citizen journalist, hold clues for the global community. Dr Li had sent a message to fellow practitioners on 30 December 2019, in a bid to alert them of a potential severe respiratory syndrome resembling the SARS outbreak in Wuhan, and that they ought to protect themselves from infection accordingly. However, within a matter of days, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau ordered him to sign a statement in January 2020, which asserted that he had made disingenuous statements, and that he had disturbed the peace. Dr Li returned to his duties after signing this statement, where he contracted SARS CoV-2,allegedly from a patient. He lost his battle with the virus, and died on 7 February 2020, leading to an outpouring of support, as well as great vexation from Chinese citizens, a great servant of the people was no more.
Around the same time that this was unfolding, citizen journalist and former lawyer Zhang Zhan gave first-hand accounts of what was taking place in Wuhan via her smartphone as the outbreak wreaked havoc. Her posts ceased in May 2020, with reports that she had been arrested. She was later convicted by a Shanghai court in December 2020 under a charge of "picking quarrels", and sentenced to 4 years imprisonment. Both Zhang Zhan and Dr Li unfortunately paid a heavy price for their erring on the side of truth in that society.
The recovery in 2020 was no less remarkable in Mainland China, with various measures implemented to manage the Coronavirus being rolled out in different cities and provinces accordingly. As such, it was disconcerting to many around the world to note that 2 years later, there were cities which had gone under lockdown, with food shortages and fatalities being reported in a city such as Shanghai, one of China's most developed cities, and a financial hub in Asia.
To date, more than 500 million cases and 6.29 million deaths as a result of the Coronavirus have been reported globally. The big question, perhaps on the minds of many is: Why was the world so unprepared for such a disaster, and what lessons can be learnt? It is unfortunate that more than 2 years later, some countries are still battling to contain infection rates from the Corona virus. If the adage that "prevention is better than cure" is indeed true, what could be done to prevent a scenario such as the brutality of Covid-19 being unleashed upon humanity, even before it starts?
Perhaps there are industries in which remote work will be a permanent feature. It is not unforeseen that a hybrid model will suit others better, while some will seek to make full use of the advantages of face-to-face and in-person interaction. A silver lining is that the aviation industry, according to IATA (International Air Transport Association), forecasts passenger numbers to reach a 94% level of 2019 figures in 2022, as well as full recovery in 2023. Given our experience, perhaps it is prudent to use the Latin phrase common in Economics circles, ceteris paribus (all things being equal) when making forecasts.
It was a grave concern that as Africans reported discriminatory behaviour and racism in Mainland China in 2020, as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, the response from the African Union was underwhelming, conveying a lethargic and incoherent organisation at a moment of crisis for the countless Africans in China and elsewhere in the world. Such a culture needs to change. In spite of this, the pandemic also brought out the best in mankind, with solidarity and camaraderie which will live on in the hearts and minds of many, both in China and across the globe.
There is no question that the world has experienced great upheavals over the past 2 years, with different nations offering different solutions to a catastrophe such a Covid-19, an enemy felt by all, and visible to none. However, it has become apparent that the world needs strong institutions which will ensure that human rights, human dignity and cooperation ought to remain paramount at all times.
Furthermore, the time is ripe to affirm that institutions which profess to serve all of humanity, such as the United Nations, must reform as a matter of urgency, in order to ensure that Africa, a continent with a population of 1.4 billion people (16% of the world's population), has a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. The status quo, which paternalistically seeks to set the timetable for Africa's freedom and dignity, is untenable.
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