Princely H. Glorious, Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania:
The world around me is in a collective pause. The world within brims as usual – with life, with possibility, with verve.
The world around (2/2)
This virus has forced our world to slow down. It has forced us to live more deliberately, albeit also more precariously. Or perhaps all it has done is expose how precariously we were already living. How unreliable the systems that underpin our daily realities are. By design, the guiding principles of our social, political and economic systems maximize money, not life. “Shareholder value” is more sacred to our societies than the humans the system is supposedly designed for. The discontents of globalization are more visible: from the American rage directed at WHO, to the xenophobia against Africans in China. Our systems were crap. The same people who preach free trade with evangelistic fervor ask governments to step in and save big business. The ideologies that prioritize saving money over saving human lives are being found out. The age-old problem of African stories being told by non-Africans with crafty (often geopolitical) motives has reared its ugly head more intensely with reporting on Tanzania’s response to the pandemic. A (hopefully uncoordinated) cabal of “Africa experts” on high horses are criticizing Tanzania’s decision not to aggressively lock down its economy. I am yet to see this
“What can we learn from the Swedish approach?” reads one headline.
“Tanzania’s handling of pandemic raises eyebrows” reads another.
“Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy will Soon be the World’s” reads one headline.
“No lockdown: US warns of the high risk of contracting COVID-19 in Tanzania” reads another.
“Sweden deserves praise for no-lockdown strategy.” Really?
I don’t agree 100% with either Sweden’s or Tanzania’s strategies but… Can we extend this “benefit of the doubt” to all sovereign nations and the strategies they decide to use based on their evaluat? Or can we only do this to the rich ones? One thing we know about this pandemic is that we don’t yet know how to deal with this pandemic with certainty.