2 minute read
Muslim Views, April 2020
COVID-19 has played havoc with our communities, and it is not over
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THIS edition of Muslim Views goes to press at a time in history that will be recorded as a period rivalling or even more tragic than the bubonic plague (Black Death) and the 1918 'Spanish' flu that killed millions of people around the world, including hundreds of thousands in South Africa.
Some years ago, South Africans were outraged when the leadership of this country toasted, with champagne, the health of the nation on behalf of the poor. It was a sick moment in the post-apartheid dream. What it showed was the incredible arrogance of the leadership of the country and their unbelievable distancing from the impoverished millions to whom they were supposed to steer state resources to create a just society in which each person could flourish and achieve happiness and success for themselves, their loved ones and their communities.
And so it is a cruel irony that we now live in a world, brought on by the horror of the COVID-19 reality, that is characterised by the idea of ‘social distancing’. The difference in the two types of ‘distancing’, one by an arrogant leadership in the past, and the newer concept of ‘social distancing’, have some things in common for us in South Africa.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit us at a time when the country was finally able to see the rot that had emerged in a state apparatus that served to feed the top leadership and their families and friends.
The revelations at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture have nauseated decent people and have destroyed the myth of all liberation movements and cadres being focused on serving the oppressed millions.
The Zondo Commission formalises much of the brave journalism and courage of ordinary people who blew the whistle on corruption that made the perpetrators of this corruption unable to morally speak against apartheid’s monstrous crimes with any level of credibility ever again.
Thus we find ourselves, in the most unequal society in the world, in a COVID-19 lockdown in which liberals and middle-class folks state that ‘we are all in this together’. No, we are not. We are all faced with COVID-19, yes. But some can stretch and listen to the ocean from their patios in the still segregated elite areas in which they live. Their pantries and fridges flow over. Zoom meetings are the rage and video-streaming services have never had it this good. But, on our comfortable doorsteps, the full horror of COVID-19 plays out in the desperate hunger and deprivation of the overwhelming majority of our compatriots.
Sadly, the scenes of people being provided with food hampers and water tanks make some of us feel good about ourselves. We feel that we are ‘champions of the poor’. This is not the Islamic way. We ought to feel shame at the thought that we live in a society in which we do not raise our voices, daily, against the brutality of a political and economic system, all made by choice, that makes people have to ‘perform’ their poverty in front of us so that they can ‘qualify’ for food and other forms of necessities.
The state’s R500-billion COVID-19 stimulus package is a welcome response, and our task now is to make the creation of a socially just society a reality now, and in the post-COVID-19 world. We ought to pledge this as we enter Ramadaan.
