Chido Muzanenhamo (Postgraduate Student

Re-imagination of the home, work and time

Reflections on COVID-19

CHIDO MUZANENHAMO Postgraduate Student

STAY AT HOME! STAY AT HOME TO SAVE LIVES. I mean, how difficult could that be? Don’t people want to live?

‘Ndoregedza kubata maoko here?’ (Should I not go and pass my condolences?). On the 26th of March, the first day of the lockdown, I received word from my mother that my aunt at our family homestead in the rural areas had finally succumbed to an illness from which she had suffered for decades. Kubata Maoko is a Shona term which literally means ‘the act of holding hands’. The term is also used to describe the practice of expressing one’s condolences to the recently bereaved, and it involves the act of physically shaking hand. On that day my sister and I would taking turns to phone my mother to discourage her from attending the funeral and commiserating with the rest of the family as our culture requires. The situation seemed paradoxical. While social distancing by staying at home is the best way to avoid a risk of contracting Covid-19, it does not automatically make ‘home’ a safe place. Lefebvre has already argued that understanding the significance of lived experiences and symbolic meanings of space is very important.1 We humans are social beings and because of this, we have the ability to transform different environments for whatever the social occasion demands. Covid-19 has invaded our lives to an extent that it is all that we talk and think about. Everything relates to it. We muse about how we had taken for granted the times when we could be outside and go wherever we wanted. There is constant talk about all of the plans we have when ‘all this is over’. However, what we failed to consider is that there is still something else happening, besides the pandemic. There is life! As the death of my aunt has shown, the cycles of life: birth, schooling, work, other illnesses and eventually, death, – continues unaltered. We experience life by partaking in these and other social activities in different spaces which then have specific symbolic meanings for each one of us. Likewise, prior to Covid-19, the home was a space where, after the death of a beloved person, people would gather to commiserate. I can imagine that for my uncle and cousins, at present it symbolizes grief accompanied by solitude, and even feelings of abandonment because at a time when love and support are needed, the comfort and company of family is needed, most of us could not be there due to the proviso: STAY AT HOME TO SAVE NOT ONLY YOUR LIFE, BUT ALSO THAT OF OTHERS.

Although I clearly empathize with my late aunt’s closest family members, I honestly do not regret that my mother and

relatives did not put themselves at risk by attending the funeral. I am a huge advocate of the STAY HOME campaign, as I believe that it is safer at home. Well, these were my thoughts until a week into the lockdown, the following message appeared on my Facebook feed:

STAY HOME TO BE SAFE! Another ‘AHA!’ moment. Until then, my thoughts on Covid-19 really had been focused on my safety and that of my loved ones. Frankly, I was not the only one thinking this way. For instance, in an effort to avoid crowds, I decided to engage in my bulk grocery shopping a week before the lockdown was announced. I now realize what a privileged position I was in to be able to even do this and yet, I was still annoyed to find so many empty shelves in the stores. It was not only the ‘in demand commodities’ of this pandemic that were sold out – the hand wash and sanitizers – also included was meat, eggs and tinned food! The irritation really came from an instinct for self-preservation; if I had everything I required I wouldn’t have to leave the place I currently call home because if you STAY HOME YOU SAVE LIVES. At that point for me, home equated a safe haven where I could cut off the rest of the world and reconnect with my spouse, who before Covid-19 I had been unable to spend a lot of time with, due to work and school commitments. Home was safe, until I read that message and another reality check hit. Police Minister Bheki Cele reported at a ministerial briefing that the police had received more than 87 000 gender-based violence complaints during the first week of the lockdown2. Suddenly, Covid-19 became less about coughs and sneezes and more about how so many of us were not only feeling trapped but were actually prisoners in our own homes. Most of my university friends, graduates in the School of Human and Community Development, began sending messages with contact details of social workers and psychologists to pass on for both victims of abuse but those whose mental health has been affected by social distancing.

As videos began to be circulated in social media, showing those living in townships and in Hillbrow being chased by the Army and the Police, endless debates

were to consider whether the STAY HOME campaign and social distancing in general was an ‘elitist response’ to the COVID-19 pandemic. I found myself defending the State’s response to my cousins who live in Europe, who think the South African government is being excessive in its control of human movement. ‘What about the legacy of Apartheid spatial planning? What about the neoliberal economic policies that have made the SA government embrace the informal economy as a form of job creation, whereas now the very same members of the informal sector are being chased off the streets and cannot make a living?’ It is so frustrating because, yes – by telling people to stock up on food and supplies so that they can stay home and be safe, one is making an assumption that they can afford to store food, or that they have a home to go to, and no – the government is preventing the vulnerable and marginalized from continuing to engage in economic activities, because such overt efforts will save more people from the contracting this disease. It is really a catch twenty-two situation. And not only for those involved in the informal economy but those formally employed are frequently reminded by their employers that if the lockdown were to continue it may impact on job security. We are living in a climate of fear. We are afraid of contracting Covid-19 but also of losing our source of income. STAY HOME TO STAY SAFE. And yet the home is no longer a place of relaxation but an extension of capital – a production plant for those who engage in immaterial labour. Thompson argued on how the internalization of time was significant in the shifts from preindustrial task-orientated work to the work routines required by industrial capital.3 And now because we are always at home, for those of us who can work from where we live, our understanding of time is suddenly convoluted.

Some employers are taking advantage of the situation. My spouse, who is employed as a software developer, is now expected to work up to twelve hours on weekdays and this has not stopped his manager from contacting him on weekends and public holidays to ask for more work. One of his managers went as far as suggesting that because “none of us is really allowed to go anywhere” due to the lockdown, “we might as well work”. For my spouse, an end to quarantine cannot come any sooner so that he can redefine home to be what it was before; a safe haven, a place of relaxation and rest. Yet, despite being overworked during this time there is no resistance from him because of the fear of losing an income that is essential to our survival.

Figure 18: Queue outside a Ecocash Outlet in Harare, Zimbabwe, a mobile money transfer platform

When I received the photograph above of a queue one of my relatives was standing in just to receive money, it now made me think, how are we supposed to STAY AT HOME in Africa? A country like Zimbabwe depends so much on remittances from those working in the diaspora just for their extended families to survive. And what if our relatives overseas can’t work from home? Even worse how are we supposed to kubata maoko if they contract Covid-19 away from home in a world that currently has global travel restrictions? Well one of my childhood friends unfortunately had to experience that this weekend when her sibling passed away in the UK from the virus. The family has been told the body will be cremated and the ashes will be sent to Zimbabwe at a later date. Her sibling’s death was announced on social media and a lot of people found out that way. So what does this mean? That Covid-19 has now made virtual space more important than physical space? That we should not only reimagine how we work and live but how we grieve as well, because HOME IS NOT ALWAYS SAFE.

Endnotes 1 Lefebvre H. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford. Basil Blackwell 2 Tshalenga L. 03 April 2020. ‘More than 87 000 GBV complaints received during lockdown’. SABC NEWS. https://www.sabcnews. com/sabcnews/more-than-87-000gbv-complaints-received-duringlockdown/ [Accessed 16 April 2020] 3 Thompson. E.P. 1967. Time Work Discipline. Oxford University Press