A repeat of the last two years, when Covid-19 decimated lives and livelihoods, is the last thing anyone would want to see this year. But it appears that the pandemic is here to stay, at least for the short term. My wish, therefore, is that we find ways to mitigate its impacts.
The starting point is that all of humanity should have equitable access to vaccines, which, it has been proven, reduce the odds of one being infected by the virus and passing it on. Should a fully vaccinated person be infected, chances are that he or she will not experience severe symptoms and will less likely require hospitalisation, compared with an unvaccinated person.
The global distribution of these prophylactics has been characterised in some quarters as vaccine apartheid. This is more apt than vaccine nationalism, a term some seem to prefer when referring to the inequity. The vaccine nationalism euphemism papers over the racialised consequences of vaccine inequality. As of November, for example, only 13.5 Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered per 100 Africans, compared with upwards of 80 doses in the global North.
This leaves the continent vulnerable to new and more transmissible variants of the virus. When the new variants do surface, the developed countries – which hog the available vaccine supplies – tend to be unsympathetic to their vaccine-starved counterparts. An example is what happened when South African scientists announced in November that they had discovered the new Omicron variant. Travel bans were immediately imposed on this country and its neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region – never mind that no one could tell with any degree of accuracy if Omicron had originated in South Africa and that the countries shutting us out had much bigger Covid-19 infection burdens than us.
So, on the Covid-19 front, I yearn for genuine solidarity among nations and the relegation into the dustbin of history of vaccine apartheid.
Of course, as Africans, we have to do our bit. For one thing, those who wield influence should desist from making irresponsible utterances that bolster the antivaccine sentiment among sections of the population. Here, I’m thinking of the likes of Mogoeng Mogeong, the former chief justice. He gave a good account of himself while serving as the head of the judiciary and I admire him for never shying away from expressing his religious beliefs, but I think he put his foot in his mouth when he suggested, while speaking on a public forum, that vaccination campaigns were part of a sinister scheme orchestrated by the devil.
Secondly, the powers that be should not dilly-dally when it comes to introducing vaccine mandates. Those who resist vaccination should bear the consequences of their unreasonableness – being barred from public spaces, workplaces and travel abroad, for instance – while the rest of us pick up the pieces after a painful two years.
I also yearn for multilateral bodies that are not mere paper tigers but have the will to flex their muscles when member countries misbehave. What is the African Union (AU) doing while Ethiopia is in the throes of a civil war that is causing unnecessary deaths and displacing scores of people? Next door, in eSwatini, citizens agitating for a fully democratic order are being subjected to horrific treatment, yet the continental body pretends to see and hear no evil in that country, which happens to be Africa’s last absolute monarchy.
So, this year, I would like to see an AU – as well as an SADC – that is very much like the Economic Community of West African States. This bloc has proved on several occasions that it has zero tolerance for leaders with a propensity for hanging on to power, even when citizens no longer want them.