COVID-19: An open letter from African intellectuals to Africa’s leaders
https://africanarguments.org/2020/04/16/coronavirus-open-letter-african-intellectuals-africa-leaders/?fbclid=IwAR0II2S6VocvrFgiDRqadQuqPjQXgE0Pxilq4bZvFYfblD9-Rqm3my_1Abc
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100 leading academics and writers call on leaders to govern with compassion and see the crisis as a chance for a radical change of direction.
The threats that are hanging over the African continent with regards to the spread of COVID-19 demand our individual and collective attention. The situation is critical. Yet this is not about mitigating another “African” humanitarian crisis but to diffuse the potentially damaging effects of a virus that has shaken the global order and put under question the bases of our living-together.
The coronavirus pandemic lays bare that which well-to-do middle classes in African cities have thus far refused to confront. In the past ten years, various media, intellectuals, politicians and international financial institutions have clung to an idea of an Africa on the move, of Africa as the new frontier of capitalist expansion; an Africa on the path to “emerging” with growth rates that are the envy of northern countries. Such a representation, repeated at will to the point of becoming a received truth, has been torn apart by a crisis that has not entirely revealed the extent of its destructive potential. At the same time, any prospect of an inclusive multilateralism – ostensibly kept alive by years of treaty-making – is forbidding. The global order is disintegrating before our very eyes, giving way to a vicious geopolitical tussle. The new context of economic war of all against all leaves out countries of the Global South so to speak stranded. Once again we are reminded of their perennial status in the world order in-the-making: that of docile spectators.
Like a tectonic storm, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to shatter the foundations of states and institutions whose profound failings have been ignored for too long. It is impossible to list these, suffice it to mention chronic under-investment in public health and fundamental research, limited achievements in food self-sufficiency, the mismanagement of public finances, the prioritisation of road and airport infrastructures at the expense of human well-being. All of this has in fact been the object of an abundant specialised research, except that it seems to have escaped attention in spheres of governance on the continent. The management of the ongoing crisis constitutes a most glaring evidence of this gap.
On the necessity to govern with compassion
Adopting the all-securitarian model of “containment” of northern countries – often without much care to specific contexts – many African countries have imposed a brutal lockdown upon their populations; here and there, violation of curfew measures has been met with police violence. If such containment measures have met the agreement of middle classes shielded from crowded living conditions with some having the possibility to work from home, they have proved punitive and disruptive for those whose survival depends on informal activities.
Let’s be clear: we are not advocating an impossible choice between economic security vs health security but we wish to insist on the necessity for African governments to take into account the chronic precarity that characterises the majority of their populations. Yet, as a continent that is familiar with pandemic outbreaks, Africa has a head start in the management of large-scale health crises. However, it should gird itself against complacency.
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Lots more at link
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