All hands on deck - Our people are perishing

Kgosietsile Ngakaagae | Friday January 29, 2021 16:26

COVID19 is killing our people. I very much grew up with the late, Tebby Setlhomo. We attended, Holiness Union Church, together; we sang together in the church choir. We have been brother and sister since, and she was friends with my siblings too. I have advised her professionally and as a brother. The loss, is personal. Her passing away not only robbed us of a great talent, but of a good human being. So long, my friend. So long, my sister.

Just as we were still mourning Tebby, we lost another icon, Major David Bright. It was another devastating, national loss, sending shivers across the nation. Surely, every death is a death too many. Families are hurting. For those that have not lost loved ones, fear is the new normal. We are scared for our parents, and our children. It looks like things might just get worse before they get better. We pray to God that it doesn’t turn that way. We can ill afford a lengthy battle with COVID-19. The economy is in tatters, and government is running out of ideas. I picked a paper the other day with a screaming headline, to the effect that government was appealing to the World Health Organisation for help. All this after spending P2.5bn. We are nowhere near having the requisite capacity to hold ground against the raging pandemic.

Well, I have survived COVID-19. I spent a considerable part of November, 2020, at Sir Ketumile Masire teaching Hospital, fighting for my life. It is not an experience I would wish upon anyone. But lo and behold, I am not out of the woods even yet. Someone from the hospital texted me, the other day, advising me to be very careful as the new COVID strain is even harder to treat. These are people who laboured to keep me alive, and who by God’s grace, succeeded.

Government has effected a ban on alcohol sales, and imposed curfews. Frankly, I do not believe the two interventions really work. A lockdown could work, but we are in no shape for one. Our people are already drowning in business and household debt. Many businesses have closed, or are struggling to stay afloat. Families are struggling. Many parents have had to pull their children off private schools because they can no longer afford same. With more lockdowns the burden would be passed on to a government that is already pleading for help. Another lockdown would wreak misery upon the population. It’s a delicate choice between options, equally unenviable. A vaccine rollout plan is still proving elusive. In the meantime, our people are dying and the motherland is enveloped in fear.

We are the primary keepers of our health, that of our parents, and children. The sooner that seeks into every individual, the better. It has never been more urgent to act responsibly, as individual citizens. Each time you observe a COVID19 protocol, you are literally standing between your family and possible death. We owe it all to ourselves, to our children, and our country.

Let us act responsibly. Let us obey, COVID19 protocols. That way, we can make the burden of fiscal interventions, under which government is groaning, much lighter. We can save the nation the little resources left to protect the most vulnerable. Most importantly, we can defeat the scourge, or at least manage its spread to a point where it is equal to our fighting capacity.

I have argued before, and so have others, that a top-down approach to fighting an epidemic does not work. It is not about glory. It is about survival. The pandemic needs all hands on deck. We cannot defeat COVID by merely preaching efforts on BTV. Make no mistake about it, I do not make light of government’s efforts and those of all the patriots at the Mass Media Complex, who have put so much into the fight. I am simply saying that I have lived through an epidemic lasting at least two decades. I have seen HIV AIDS de-humanise my people. I have seen death at a king-size scale. The wounds remain open until today. More than that, I have seen the triumph of the human spirit, when all citizens pull together.  The tide was reversed by a bottom up; with all citizen talent summoned to national duty.

 But lo and behold; how much of the P2.5bn went into community mobilization? Well, a fraction went into economic bailouts. The rest was spent on corrupt tenders. We cannot mobilise communities by banning alcohol. That is almost nonsensical, when pushed as a primary intervention.  It is time to pull together the best of our energies, skills and talents.

We can no longer afford to have a small communications team, whose main duty is to create meme’s. We should be having well-coordinated local communications teams, across the country, with all experts on board. We should be drawing from the talents and experiences of those who were at the forefront in the war against HIV AIDS. We should be mobilizing them, and the structures that were in existence in that effort. For we have realized that the primary solution to COVID19 is not scientific. It is social, at least for the time being.

My condolences to the families of Tebby, and Major Bright. We lost the best of us.  May Gods comfort be upon all who have lost loved ones.