I have had the misfortune of traversing the country during this pandemic and one uniting feature that jars in your face in all of South African towns is of long and meandering lines of South Africans queuing outside The Post Office for a measly R350 Covid-19 cheaque. The soul destroying sight of my countryman and woman baked by the scorching sun in Mthatha or soaked by pouring rain in Katlehong has laid bare the calamitous and endemic poverty our world order has bequeathed to our generation. Our political leaders are endowed with blaster and fury but with a woeful supply of gumption nor wherewithal to enact the changes required to haul us out of the current economic and social cesspool. But a blinker of light is emerging on the horizon as the economic and societal breakdown brought by the pandemic is promising to bring along a breakthrough we need. 

The coronavirus wave that has swept across the world has brought with it a gilt edge opportunity to reset our world. Whilst those who are beneficiaries of the current world order will be keen to maintain the status quo, the voices of those agitating for change have been growing louder and stronger. The pandemic occurs in a context of growing erosion of human rights. In at least 11 countries, governments were silencing dissent and limiting civil society activities before the pandemic struck, and pandemic induced restrictions have made this worse. According to the recently published OXFAM Report, The Inequality Virus, communities have taken action to demand, and even create, socially just, inclusive, transformed and feminist future. Instances of these voices growing louder and stronger are thick on the ground. The OXFAM Report catalogues these voices. 

In Iran, neighborhoods have engaged in mutual aid to feed and care for one another in spontaneous act of solidarity. In Peru, feminist activists were part of massive youth led citizen protests against a parliamentary coup d’état forcing the authoritarian interim Presidents resignation. Closer to home, in Nigeria, protests sparked by police brutality have snowballed and have grown to make wider social and political demands. In Costa Rica, protests have erupted against the government after it sought a $1.75Billion loan from the IMF in exchange for austerity measures, including public sector wage freezes.

 Young climate activists have seized the window of opportunity and have adapted their activism to share plans for greener cities, reduced consumption and wildlife recovery and more. The crisis spawned by the pandemic has helped to raise the voices of discontent by a few decibels and connecting with other preexisting socials movements to morph into a global movement capable on forcing change. Millions of people across the globe are already mobilizing to call for change and to protest against inequality, racism, patriarchy and the climate crisis. From the global #BlackLivesMatter uprisings that started in the US, to youth and women’s rights activists and Indigenous leaders (like Nemonte Nenquimo in the Amazon331) standing together in solidarity around the globe, to brave pro-democracy protests across Asia. 

People power is rising. Now is the time to rip up the rulebook, the report advocates and at the same time appeals to governments to invest in policies that will build a more equal, inclusive and sustainable world. Now is the time to dismantle structural racism and patriarchy, and design a democratic processes which ensure that the rights of all people, including those currently living in poverty, woman, black people, afro-descendants, indigenous peoples and historical marginalized and oppressed communities are met. More than anything, now is the time for governments to take specific and concrete actions that will build towards that better future. People around the globe will need to continue to challenge those currently in power to do more. A radical and sustained reduction in inequality is the indispensable foundation of our new world. 

Governments must set concrete, time-bound targets to reduce inequality, and not simply by returning to pre pandemic levels: they must go further to create a more equal world as a matter of urgency. Fighting inequality must be at the heart of economic rescue and recovery. This must include gender and racial equality. For people living in poverty, women, Black people, Afro-descendants, Indigenous Peoples, and historically marginalized and oppressed communities around the world, this would mean them seeing their governments prioritize their needs through action to address current levels of exclusion from quality healthcare, social protection, education and more. Without more and better data disaggregated by gender and other identity markers, including intersectional data, public policies will remain gender- and colour-blind and will keep failing to level the playing field. 

As the report states, Governments have been steering the economy based on the false assumption that GDP growth should be the primary goal of policy making. Nowhere this is more apt and evident than in our country. Since the birth of our democracy our GDP has ticked up remarkable and yes in the last couple of years we have struggled even with negative GDP growth. But in all the years we have had economic prosperity as measured by GDP, those people at the bottom have not been invited to participate in the economic jamboree.  Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz whose work and study on the inequality issues I admire states that “In the middle of the twentieth century, it came to be believed that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’: economic growth would bring increasing wealth and higher living standards to all sections of society. In the ensuing economic and political debate, this ‘rising tide hypothesis’ evolved into a much more specific idea, according to which regressive economic policies – policies that favour the richer classes – would end up benefiting everyone.” The virus has exposed some major short comings with our policies. 

It has forced those who have been struggle on the margins to the mainstream. The long lines at post offices are telling. The struggles is real – as young people would say. GDP as a metric fails to provide guidance to address the inequality and climate crises, and in fact contributes to these crises; and it also fails to take into account the millions of hours of unpaid care work, done especially by women. As Stiglitz points out: ‘If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing.’ Governments must move beyond GDP and start to value what really matters – and a radical and sustained reduction in inequality is core to that. If we are going to realize a new world order none of us should be spectators and Arundhati Roy, the Indian Author cajoles us all here: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world view anew. 

This one is no different. It’s a portal, a gateway between one world and this next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred. Our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” Nothing could be more apt, the pandemic offers are a chance to reimagine our world order. Those lining up at the Post Office will leave nothing to their children, our common humanity behooves us to ensure that those kids inherit a better world than the one inhabited by their parents.  It’s a must.