OPINION: We shall overcome the Covid-19 national and global health crisis

Current generations of South Africans are inheritors of a proud national history whose many inspiring moments should be our guiding stars in these dark times, writes Xola Pakati.

Considering the fatalistic impact of Covid-19 on the national and global mood, the Ranch Hotel operation was an arduous feat for our country’s health system. 

Nothing could have prepared us. 

It is worth recalling that the last time the world experienced as widespread and deadly a disease as Covid-19 was a century ago with the 1918 Spanish Influenza. 

Very few people alive today lived through that apocalypse; which decimated upward of 50 million lives worldwide.

Thankfully, the co-ordinated efforts of the Departments of Health, Defence, Police, the Polokwane Local Municipality and the Limpopo Provincial Government together with the hotel have secured a proud national victory. 

However, the success of the operation is a victory for all humanity for more than one reason.

It has provided our country and the world with important lessons of the nuts and bolts of a Covid-19 quarantine exercise. 

The experience gathered will undoubtedly become useful for our country, the wider African continent and the world, as humanity continues to battle with the coronavirus. 

In the spirit of international solidarity, we too can lend some of the human resources behind this success to the rest of the continent and the world.

Crucially, the Ranch Hotel operation demonstrates the efficacy of a lockdown in fighting Covid-19. 

There is arguably a connection between the negative result shown by our fellow nationals at the Ranch Hotel and the Chinese authorities' lockdown of Wuhan in January, amid criticism from some quarters.  

No one knows what the health status of our fellow South Africans could have been had China not locked down the city and if our government had not imposed a mandatory quarantine on their return. 

In today’s interconnected world, it is safe to opine that had China not imposed a lockdown as early as she did, the current rate of infections across the globe would have been much higher. 

The moral of the story: desperate times call for desperate measures. 

The first few days of the national lockdown have been relatively successful although not without their fair share of compliance problems from some sections in our country. 

While some of the factors which might make compliance somewhat challenging for some of our fellow nationals, such as the living conditions in some township and informal settlements, are understandable, we will do well to appreciate that, desperate measures are just that.

Relatedly, one of the difficult matters to broach is the abiding apartheid spatial and other identities which result in (some) urbanites of rural origins feeling constrained to travel to the countryside during a national lockdown, risking infection or infecting others en route to or at their various destinations.

Additionally, leaders from across the board ought to flag apparent deficits in levels of discipline in our country which have seen, especially adult men, consuming alcohol on street pavements despite innumerable calls against the sale as well as the consumption of liquor in places other than private homes during this period.

The political economy of our country and the world must feature uppermost in the discourse and policy initiatives of the post Covid-19 national and global health crisis, lest humanity perishes from diseases which combust in a flammable mix of poverty and other social asymmetries within and between nations.

Equally, emerging forms of co-operation between government and the private sector should inspire other more decisive forms of social compacting to tackle the lingering structural social inequality which accentuates the spread of diseases like Covid-19.  

All our departments and arms of government, from local to national, will need to draw and record the important lessons that will continue to emerge about the handling of the Covid-19 outbreak for the future.  

Meanwhile, we all need to ensure the success of the national lockdown in our self-interest: to save the human species. 

For its part, the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality has taken additional measures to complement those announced by the national and Eastern Cape provincial governments.  

In fact, before the national lockdown, we closed all public amenities such as our breath-taking beaches, parks, picnic and bird-watching spots along natural and history museums. 

Following the lockdown, we decided that there would be no more than 25 mourners per funeral at a cemetery and only two interments at a time.

Since the lockdown, we have run a continuous campaign to educate communities about the coronavirus through community radio stations.  To this, we added a loud hailing broadcast campaign by municipal officials.

To promote greater buy-in to the measures announced by the government, we have also held meetings with tavern owners, taxi operators and the religious fraternity.

Our ward councillors and ward committees have been distributing information to households in an all hands on deck initiative to provide information.

Current generations of South Africans are inheritors of a proud national history whose many inspiring moments should be our guiding stars in these dark times. 

Its inspiration is testimony to the fortitude of the steel-fulcrum women and men who bequeathed to us the gift of freedom.  

With respect to Covid-19, humanity's strategic challenge of the moment, we should proclaim: "A luta continua; a vitória é certa"- "The struggle continues, victory is certain." 

We shall live on and fight on; honouring the memory of the many who sacrificed so much for our freedom. 

- Xola Pakati is Executive Mayor of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality and Chairperson of the South African Cities Network Council.