In those early days of lockdown, when the reality of the situation started to dawn on us, many people were looking forward to ‘going back to normal’, to ‘the good old days’ of January and February that seemed suddenly so unreal. Yet, when shelters for the homeless sprang up, the hungry started to be fed, households could apply for financial support, schools and communities were supplied with water tanks, there was talk about ‘de-densifying’ overcrowded neighbourhoods, and the skies cleared, one had to start wondering about this nostalgia for ‘normality’.
It was extraordinary to see what our government and local community structures were actually capable of if the perceived stakes were high enough. Could the same urgency towards Covid-19 be redirected towards the war against women and children (and their sexuality in particular), towards alleviating poverty and creating jobs, decent housing, decent schooling, water, power and infrastructure in general? Could we make the key policy terms human dignity and a decent existence for all? In Rawlsian terms, it means maximizing the minimum, or raising the life quality of the worst off.
My surprise about the newly found resources and resolve reminded me of an experience I had had in the USA. My husband and I were on a visit to Princeton, when he fell seriously ill with Lyme disease. Princeton town is chock-a-block full of medical institutes and centres of all kinds. I used to cycle past many of these buildings on my way to the campus. However, when my husband fell ill, as a foreigner without a US security number, I suddenly found myself completely unable to access any medical help. As he grew delirious with fever, I spent days on my bicycle and phone trying to find someone who would even see him.
He was at last admitted to an emergency unit and placed on a drip. I was anxious about whether our medical insurance would cover the expenses incurred, and so were the hospital staff. Then, someone asked us whether we had travelled lately. I said no, we did not travel, we came here straight from Cape Town. The doctor almost fainted – you have been to Africa?? We explained no, we live there. Everything changed in an instant. Suddenly the health care system opened to us, six masked doctors appeared and tested the patient for TB, malaria, HIV, Ebola… There I experienced first-hand how a perceived public health threat forced the system to focus on our needs. Whereas, while it had ‘only’ been a matter of my husband’s life, nobody seemed to care. I think the parallels with South Africa’s response to Covid-19, and its general neglect of people’s well-being, are clear.
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