One of the early phenomena of the COVID-19 outbreak were expressions of solidarity with the common man by the outrageously wealthy. The most memorable was Madonna marinating in a milky bathtub while talking in a low, soothing register about how we are all in this together. It was as though she was preparing herself to be scooped out of the tub and spread over the world like a salve.
She might really have thought we were in the same boat. Ignorance can be callous. There was, admittedly, something innocent about her contorting her frame in a tub, trying to wrap her mind around it all; like a virgin, touched by a crisis for the very first time.
Maybe that’s unfair. So many of us are guilty of platitudes after all, of talking big and acting small. But many would like to believe that if they had her wealth or even her skin colour, they would use it to close the gap between their convictions and actions.
Is that really what we can observe from the world? Are the ‘rich’ and ‘white’ blind to their privilege while the rest of us are full of empathy with eyes wide open to all humanity?
In South Africa it wasn’t ‘the rich’ or ‘white’ who opposed an earlier opening of the economy. Rich, living pay-check to pay-check, black or white, people whose income was relatively secure did what was best for them. It is not true of all people, but it was more likely that if your income was not immediately affected by the lockdown you supported an extended economic lockdown.
The battle lines were falsely drawn between those concerned about lives (their own) and science, versus those who cared about the economy and were presumably listening to quacks. When the same experts, extolled by the former, came out strongly against the lockdown’s extension past the initial 3-5 weeks there was no reflection on having fervently supported government edicts. No guilt about how they raked over the coals anyone who dared to question. No apology directed at those they called ‘tone deaf’, ‘indifferent to lives’, ‘peddling Trump’s message’ etc.
It was not the science that was intoxicating, but rather state control in a time of fear, nevermind that it was an incapable state taking control. For a brief moment they saw an opportunity for the country to stand behind Ramaphosa. Anyone who could not do that, whatever the merit of their arguments, was branded unpatriotic.
When did the economy become so dehumanised? Maybe at the point where hatred for speculative markets turned into loathing of all business. ‘A business can always be rebuilt’, we were told with the certainty of those whose businesses were fine or who had never built a business.
And we learn from the supporters of Black Lives Matter that a building being destroyed, while wrong, cannot be equated with someone’s life. Do people really look at a hairdresser or a grocery store and just see a building? These are some of the same people who will lecture about empathy without any irony. And I have been trying to make sense of it. Why do some not see the people in the brick and mortar? Is it economic illiteracy, a lack of knowledge about how a business comes to be, or do they lack the empathy they accuse others of but cannot see in themselves?
If you don’t look at a building and see the people who built that business, if you don’t see the people that work there your empathy is not without its blindspots. Neighbours lost their livelihoods obeying economic restrictions, sons couldn’t say goodbye to their mothers, families and friends could not grieve together. And when people broke down and didn’t have the strength to watch what they cared for dissipate they were met with derision and lectured about the dangers of COVID. Some were told they had to suck it up like everybody else and not let their ‘white fragility’ hang out on display. Nevermind that economic devastation is also a danger to society, nevermind that it is not only white people that own a business.
As we observe events in the US from South Africa, it takes a really parochial understanding of empathy not to understand why many are upset about the doublespeak. Why is it now OK to protest? When did the virus become such a sophisticated moral arbiter? When did it learn to discern between just and unjust causes?
Some black people are treated like animals because of racism and prejudice, and others will be treated that way because the police and justice system is often violent and cruel to everybody. Systemic racism, generalised police and societal brutality can be true at the same time. Certainly, in South Africa we know this.
We live in a very violent country. But some are not permitted to grieve or express their frustrations. When people say ‘all lives matter’ it is rejected as ‘whataboutism’. I do not feel the need to interject ‘black lives matter’ with ‘all lives matter’, just as I would not arrive at an HIV awareness drive to lecture everyone about their attendance of cancer awareness events.
When people who live on, or near, farms describe the kind of torture and brutality meted out on their communities, they are silenced by sophisticated numerical analyses of the violence taking place elsewhere in the country. We are playing a dangerous game. Is it any wonder we are such an angry society?
I do not want to live in a world built on resentment, where success is scorned and where those born into relative privilege feel they must self-flagellate and atone. Neither, however, can those born into privilege continue to delude themselves into the idea that their ‘hard work’ was solely responsible for where they are.
I have written about merit before, and the privilege it is to have a skill or talent which the world values or to be in a position to display or nurture your talents. I do still believe in a meritocratic society and that merit can be made to work more fairly. It will never be entirely fair since we are born with different endowments, and policy cannot eradicate inherent difference. Though sometimes it feels like we are not far off from a demand that we be made biologically equal.
If hard work and determination was the measure by which people succeed in life then a gardener (Samuel) I once knew would be in a better position than I. He had witnessed death in his family on a mass scale in the DRC, crossed borders, worked with pigs and was taking himself through university. His hands were so calloused that he said it often hurt to pick up a pen.
It is a delusion, of even some liberals, to believe so fervently in agency and merit as to think much more of life is within our control than is not. And that as a result of agency we can view life as a matter of just desserts. Many of us do not deserve our fortune, and many of our fellow travellers do not deserve their misfortune. I am not certain of much, but I am certain we live in a world so spectacularly indifferent to what we deserve.
To hear each other from across groups, we also need to hear different voices from within so called race groups. We need to be honest about black on black oppression. It’s why Biden could say ‘if you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.’ He has been emboldened by black people who have taught him that real black people think and feel as they do. Any black person who doesn’t see the world the way we do isn’t really black.
That Biden moment of ‘you ain’t black’ was just repeating what he saw black people say to each other. It was the political equivalent of ‘nigger’. You guys say it to each all the time, why can’t I say it?
It wasn’t white people who wrote ‘traitor’ on my door at university. For what? Being vocally anti-ANCYL or SASCO. I’ve never been called a kaffir, but I’ve been called a house negro. When I watch a journalist who has liked a tweet about my being a self-hating black complaining about being ill-treated based on their race - it takes me a minute to take their side, not because I don’t believe them but because the hypocrisy is paralyzing.
Is it any wonder the whole world is crumbling under the sheer weight of all the hypocrisy! The whole world seems to be hopeful of bold, innovating policies and responses coming out of this crisis. There will be nothing bold or new if society and thought leaders remain intolerant to multiple truths- if they look to address one truth, one source of pain, solidarity with one group above another. It is a difficult and complex task to place a support beam in all the places the world is sagging.
The COVID crisis has more than any other laid bare our prejudices; our parochial empathies; who is allowed to grieve, and who is not. This is what weighs on my mind, about the sheer task of policymaking in crisis. My mother advised I take it to the lord in prayer. I am not sure what relief it will bring, but as a humanist, I have decided to take it to the public in an op-ed.
Gwen Ngwenya
