I was not there when the world was fighting the deadliest Spanish flu, or when my ancestors were fighting for our independence. The closely I have gotten is to see ‘from a distance’ when Africa  – some countries in Africa – were fighting Ebola. This is to say the coronavirus pandemic experience is new to me.

Having no experience of witnessing a global pandemic unfolding on my eyes, I panicked. I felt a deep desire to know everything, to follow the stories, understand the numbers, and mobilize “my people” to do all we can to prevent the worse from happening. Unfortunately, in the world we live today, that desire ended up being seen as panic with irrational expectations and lack of respect to ‘personal choices.’

With no doubt, this pandemic is affecting most of us at a personal level. It is no longer a distant phenomenon. Our lifestyles have changed, our income or incomes of the people we know are drying, violence in our homes is increasing, our anxiety levels are high and uncertainties and fear of the unknown are driving most of us crazy. So, it is utmost important for all of us to stay rational and protect our mental health. It is the right thing to do. However, while we are doing that, we should not forget our collective responsibility towards each other and towards humanity.

Togetherness and collective responsibility, especially in times of distress are not the concepts I have learned in school only; I have lived them. My father has 19 siblings, 3 of them are now dead (May God continue to rest their souls in peace), 17 of them (including him) are here with us – in their old age as you can imagine. From my father’s side, I have more than 100 first cousins, yes, more than a hundred first cousins – our family meeting equals townhall. If you add my father’s cousins and their children and my mother’s relatives, it’s fair to say there will be no diversity box I will not tick. To me, people with disabilities, permanent health conditions or living in poverty (hand to mouth) are not just ‘groups’ and ‘statistics’, they are people I know by names, they are my people.

Growing up in that big family, in a coastal culture, collectiveness is valued at the expense of aloneness. This is why I have never fallen in love with most ‘inspirational speakers’ with their individualist approach to everything and their personification of illusions of success pisses me of completely. I know I am who I am today because countless of people made sacrifices for me, held my hands, opened doors and offered their shoulders to climb on, not because they had more, but because they believed in collective good. And no, I don’t feel indebted, I feel a sense of responsibility to extend to others what has been extended to me, especially at times likes these. I draw my inspiration from our feminist ancestors who blazed through and survived the trials, making me affirm my rights and the rights of others.

As I sit here, reflecting on what is considered to be my “panic” and its ‘irrational expectations’, the words of my founding father of the nation replay on my mind: “Those who receive this privilege, therefore, have a duty to repay the sacrifice which others have made. They are like the man who has been given all the food available in a starving village in order that he might have strength to bring supplies back from a distant place. If he takes this food and does not bring help to his brothers, he is a traitor. Similarly, if any of the young men and women who are given an education by the people of this Republic adopt attitudes of superiority, or fail to use their knowledge to help the development of this country, then they are betraying our Union”

I am one of those who received the privilege of being ‘fairly educated.’ There are relatively many of us now. In fact, today, our continent has no shortage of ‘educated people,’ but we have a critical shortage of people with the ‘right consciousness.’ As Slavoj Žižek once said, “we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” We feel self-righteous because we have brought the ideological ideals of ‘self-made’, ‘self-acquired’, and ‘self-protected.’

These are ideals which fuel inequalities, oppressions, exploitations, sexism, misogyny, racism, and all the evils I could think of. It is these ideals that make it possible to classify and cluster our societies on the basis of power and privileges. The very same power and privileges we are refusing to make use of to help others who have less – I know this is how the system ought to operate when people have false consciousness. I understand clearly now, why my feminist sisters said “the personal is political.” 

In a continent with the highest level of poverty, structural oppressions and exclusions, weak institutions and uncouth political elites, we – the people – need to rise up to the occasion and provide personal, organizational, and collective leadership so needed to save “us” from #COVID-19 and all its associated social economic impacts. Again, in Mwalimu Nyerere’s words, “If real development is to take place, the people have to be involved” and “without unity, there is no future for Africa.”

As more than half of the people of the continent are at the risk of going to bed hungry, not able to access basic services or at the risk of being abused fueled by the pandemic, most of ‘the privileged’ are using their ‘work from home’ to play games or sharpen their online bulling skills and sing positivity and normalcy the loudest. I always wonder what is normal about this pandemic? Why are we so desperate to normalize the abnormal?

I would assume being positive in these times means giving the best of yourself to the collective good while ‘holding on’ to the idea that, together, we can win the fight against this pandemic. But alas, some went further to even get angry at sharing of #COVID-19 news – ‘it disturbs their peace,’ they say. It amazes me, in a furious way, how they tend to assume someone out there has the responsibility to fight this pandemic for them. I wonder who they have in mind because these are the same people who never get tired of blaming and shaming the incompetence of the state and state actors, so why then, now, they magically assume the state will ‘handle this’, or you are waiting for the ‘white saviors’?

In my ‘panic,’ I feel stirred and inspired by thousands of conscientized Africans who are organizing to influence and challenge government response plans, who are organizing to deliver food and other basic services to communities in need, who offer online/mobile counseling/psychological support and protect women and girls from violence, who are developing apps to track service delivery, COVID-19 contacts etc., who are making masks and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for our medical facilities, who are sharing information to the people in a timely manner and alike. To these selfless sons and daughters of the continent, keep on ‘panicking,’ the continent needs it, after all, we know how panic has saved China and how a lack of it a.k.a ‘positivity’ has put USA and Italy to be the epicenter of the pandemic – at least for now. Be encouraged to know you are on the right side of history, and be assured there is no shame in expecting people to be humans – that what ‘ubuntu’ is all about right? Together we are reclaiming the right to be, we know being pro-poor should not be an insult and doing good for other should not and cannot be an act of indignity.

As we mobilize to fight, ‘collectively as people of the continent’ against COVID19 and its associated evils including our unjust regimes, I must emphasize the need to be safe and sane. As one of my friends would say, the dead soldier has no value in the battlefield. In fact, when Mandela said, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,” it never meant he will throw himself in font of brutal apartheid flying squad to be killed. But, rather, it meant he was prepared to do the hard work to achieve the ideals of equitable society. Being selfless comes with a cost. It demands us to question our privileges, accept being uncomfortable (for lack of a better word) and endure both mental and physical pain.

Our foremothers and forefathers endured a lot for us to be here today. We can all do that too, for them, for ‘us’ in our diversity, and for the generation which will came after us. This is the time to evoke the spirit of ubuntu, pan-Africanism and feminist solidarity.