“Upside down you’re turning me”: priorities in a new world
As we’re barred from the beaches for a little while, I thought you might like a picture of Noordhoek beach.
Day 1 of Official Lockdown: here I am, in my nice comfy house, with a garden to stretch my legs, self-exercising fur children who don’t need home-schooling, a chest freezer full of food (this is normal, not pandemic-related), an internet connection. I have rewarding work lined up, masses of books in my TBR pile. I’m completely accustomed to working from home and living solo — both are deliberate lifestyle choices. Should I feel lonely (an incredibly rare experience), I can go find a cat — Boychik is ALWAYS up for a cuddle and a natter, even if his vocab is a bit limited.*
As one of my authors says, I’m better prepared than anyone she knows for the zombie apocalypse. And what the world is going through right now feels pretty close.
For me, this lockdown is no more than a minor inconvenience. I’ll miss seeing my friends, but I have the internet. I even had a Pilates class this morning via Zoom. Because I live in a retirement village (a long story), I’ve been offered meal deliveries and telephonic counselling.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so staggeringly aware of my privileges and advantages as a white middle-class woman with an education that has for decades allowed me the luxury of doing a job I choose and enjoy.
Meanwhile, the residents of Masiphumelele next door have been desperately imploring the City of Cape Town for days to send a water tanker. As of 7pm today, the first day of a national lockdown, it still hasn’t arrived. The community networks springing up everywhere are sending out repeated pleas from the townships: “We need food.”
Right now I understand the impulse of St Francis of Assisi, a rich young man who became revolted by his life of excess, and gave up all worldly trappings: looking around me, it seems I have too much of nearly everything — even books.
This chimes with the nausea I’ve long felt at the gulf between the uncaring rich and the suffering poor, a revulsion that’s been growing over the last decade. Last night I almost vomited when Haystack Head emerged from No 10 Downing Street to applaud NHS workers. The HYPOCRISY of it, after all his party has done to gut Britain’s health service! As one expat in Berlin tweeted tartly, “In Germany, we don’t clap for our health care system; we fund it.”
The other day, writing about supporting domestic workers during lockdown, I looked at a line about supplying a spray bottle if your worker “doesn’t have running water in her home.” And I realised it was an utterly surreal thing to say. WHAT THE DUCKING DUCK IS WRONG WITH US? That we expect women without access to water to come and scrub our TWO or more bathrooms and multiple taps? Yes, I know all about providing jobs and so on. But why do we even allow a society in which a family (one which overlaps with ours) has to live in a shanty without running water? What rampantly destructive epidemic of greed has made this possible?
When this is over, please dear Goddess, may we have learned the following lessons (and not paid too dearly for them).
Universal health care is not a luxury; it is a fundamental human right, and possibly the single most important duty of the state to provide. This has nothing to do with welfare and everything to do with the fact that our species is a herd in which our health is interconnected. Every pandemic ever has taught us this the hard way, and it’s time to relearn that lesson.
Mandatory paid sick leave (and maternity/paternity leave) is a fundamental labour right. (WAKE UP, AMERICA: I can understand a mom-and-pop business struggling to supply this, but it’s your richest companies that are throwing sick workers to the wolves.)
Like Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy, what really added rocket fuel to my feminism was the day I learned that not only was unpaid housework NOT factored into GDP; neither was unpaid child care. That mostly women, and poor women at that, were providing the global economy with BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS in utterly essential services, and not only were they not being paid for it; their contribution (nothing less than keeping society going) wasn’t even factored into their nations’ economies.
The stories emerging of parents and guardians learning exactly what caring for and educating children 24/7 involves are funny/not funny. We’re being reminded just how relentlessly hard this work is: I would rather clean public toilets (yes, I’ve done this, in rural France, no less) than be in sole charge of a pair of toddlers. Yet nannies and teachers are barely valued if we look at that indicator of worth of a capitalist society: paycheck.
Everyone is also discovering that it is simply not possible to work at the same time as supervising small children. But how many businesses and governments provide or subsidise child care? (hollow laughter).
And we’ve also had such a wake-up call about who does the essential work to keep civilisation running smoothly: the folk who grow, pick and pack food, who stock shelves and work at tills, who clear the garbage, who unblock our toilets (which reminds me, DON’T FLUSH WET WIPES!), repair our power and gas lines, and much more. And guess what: these are the people most likely to have rotten working conditions, poor pay, meagre benefits.
Plus all those now working remotely from home are realising they’ve been hoodwinked: they’ve been commuting to work (my idea of hell) either on jam-packed public transport or in stressful, polluting traffic for absolutely no good reason other than the assumption that left to work at home, we’ll all skive off. (Meanwhile, the freelancers I know are all workaholics; I don’t know any who don’t work at least a ten-hour day, often six days a week.) Also, and thanks to someone on Twitter for this, this means that one of the main reasons for excluding people with disabilities from the formal work sector — difficulties with access — is a crock.
As I’ve said before, we have gotten everything wrong: the way we treat the planet, resources like water, soil and food, women and children, the vulnerable in society. We allow and exalt pathological hoarding of wealth: I gagged this week when reading that Jeff Bezos, Mr Amazon, had put $25 million into a relief fund for his workers. Dude, in 2018, your company made ELEVEN BILLION IN PROFIT, on which you paid either NO federal taxes (according to most mainstream media) or 1,2% in taxes, according to Fox News. (For comparison purposes, when I last lived in the US, my modest fellowship was taxed at over 30%.) I reckon you should fork over five billion right now.
We need to change so much. We need to rethink our priorities completely. We cannot go on like this: the planet is in any case collapsing under the strain. Let’s spend this time of forced introspection thinking about ways to bring about a new kind of world, one that’s kinder and more fair, more flexible, more humane.**
To take action: look up your nearest CAN (google “community action network” or search on Facebook — Capetonians, look for Cape Town Together) to see how you can donate money for desperately needed food. Or donate to Breadline Africa with the reference “childrenlockdown” — they are making feeding children their priority right now. And please tweet @MayorDanPlato to remind him that people in Masi need that water tanker URGENTLY. (The City got tankers to Khayelitsha today, and they’re working as fast as they can, but: there are people with NO WATER. In a PANDEMIC.)
PS: This wasn’t planned as a scold. I started out intending to ask folk to share store-cupboard recipes. And realised I couldn’t write about the simple joys of cooking and eating until I had gotten this off my chest. Peace to all, and hang in there.
* Looking back on this, I cannot believe I wrote it four days after the onset of Covid symptoms. I thought it was anxiety that was making me breathless. Meanwhile, Covid pneumonia was wiggling its hands in the wings.
** Also looking back, I could weep for my idealism. I really thought the pandemic would make the world a better, kinder, more sensible and logical place. Witnessing it exacerbate almost every unpleasant human trait has been crushing.