Reflections on COVID-19: Social Distancing and Self-Isolation Professor Nnamdi Elleh
Head of School School of Architecture and Planning University of the Witwatersrand
This call for papers is about documenting our immediate experiences, feelings, memories and thoughts about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as it has been experienced in the SoAP and WITS’ community. It is understood that experts from various fields will continue to study COVID-19 for years to come. Nevertheless, tapping into immediate memories and ongoing everyday experiences can register primary resources that might never be recouped if the current understandings are allowed to fade away, only to be recollected later. On the 20th of February 2020, we opened the SoAP’s Theory & Practice Annual Exhibition Series with the work of Boogertman & Partners. All the seats in the main lecture hall (A1) in the John Moffat Building were taken, and patrons were sitting on the floor at close proximities. By then, 6
we had all heard about the COVID-19 virus in China. The last thing on anybody’s mind during the large gathering was the anticipation of a national “lockdown” and presidential proclamations about national health concerns persuading South Africans to “self-isolate” if they had recently returned from certain countries, or if they suspected that they had contracted the virus. University-wide, the academic year began on 3rd February 2020, and both students and staff were still settling into the routines of postinductions and campus culture, involving lectures, studying, assignments, exams, and extra-curricular activities. The announcement that was issued by WIT’s Senior Executive Team (SET) on Monday the 16th of March 2020, is analogous to how weather forecaster’s issued warnings to residents of North American Atlantic coastal lands that a hurricane is coming, and at some point, it finally arrives with a deluge that blows everything away. SET’s announcement brought the mid-term break forward for recess starting on Tuesday, 17 March 2020. All “academic activities,” and prior to that, previously scheduled graduation ceremonies were postponed. The anticipated reopening date on 30th March
