As the year goes to bed, it is totally in order that we look back and try to figure out exactly how some of us made it in the end. What a treacherous year it has been! For many of us it ends pretty much the same way as it started – in chaos. It has been a difficult year for all of mankind. And we say this not lightly. Across the world, the story is pretty much the same. Mayhem, grief, sadness and confusion. Lives and livelihoods have been destroyed. People who were just escaping poverty have since fallen back into it – knee deep. Covid-19 pandemic was a real spoiler. It has turned all of us into walking zombies.
The year of Armageddon that many had long talked about but only as fairytales seemed finally to have arrived.2020 has been a year that saw the whole of humanity become so helpless in the face of onslaught by a little-known virus. It really has been a harrowing year. Humanity has been torn to pieces. And our fragility was totally exposed. The rich and the famous have been tossed from their high horses as the virus truly drove home the point that we are all human afterall – regardless of social standing. At the height of the lockdown, it often felt like an apocalypse. There was silence and fear in the air.
One cannot help but get misty-eyed when trying to look back at what we have been through. As has been the case elsewhere, many of our countrymen have not made. They succumbed to Covid-19. By world standard the figures look low. But we should never lose sight of the fact that we are a small country where everybody knows everybody – pretty much. A caveat attached to these official figures is that we shall probably know the exact figures. They paid the highest price. And these are the people we should never forget. They are not statistics, but people with families and faces.Covid-19 has forced many of our compatriots to die in indignity; alone, unvisited and untouched – not even by their loved ones. It has been the same story across the world as many died alone. The silence of death, far away and detached from one’s family is simply gut-wrenching.
But in the middle of all the chaos there also have been stories of victory, kindness and humanity. There also has been a lot of healing happening among us. In the midst of sadness, we should find time to savour the small victories we witnessed. Strangers went out of their way to help strangers – often with food, shelter and clothes. It really is the irony of 2020 that humanity having suffered as a collective, is now emerging from it more divided than it was the case before Covid-19 first hit. The arrival of vaccine was supposed to bring hope and optimism, that at long last mankind would claim back his way of life from the virus. But for many across the world, that optimism is fast giving way to unvarnished realities.
Divisions are once again emerging as show themselves through the shades of vaccine nationalism. The rich nations are taking care of their citizens first. The poor nations can wait – they are once again on their own. Immunity will arrive late in Africa. The continent, owing to its vast poverty and also low investments on any infrastructure will be among the last in the world to get vaccine. This is notwithstanding clear evidence that no part of humanity will be safe from coronavirus until all of humanity has been immunised.
It hits you between your eyes to remember that many of our people didn’t make it. It gets more painful with a realization that it might be a few more years before Batswana get vaccinated against coronavirus. That is part of geopolitics. Globalists like to pretend that globalization with its accompanying technology has levelled development across the world and that a young boy born in Molepolole today has equal chances and equal opportunities in life as a young boy born in Chicago. It’s an overstretch. Like many other countries, Botswana is fighting what looks like a second wave. Government has pretty much done what best it could. There is a lot of legroom for improvement – on communication, but also on truth telling. At one point we faced what looked like sure destruction.
Of course we are worse off now than was the case in the beginning. But in the main the country has dodged the bullet, so to speak. We should drink to that. If we keep our guard, as a country we still have a chance to emerge on the other side with something to celebrate. More crucially we should continually honour those of our countrymen who didn’t make it. Their demise was not in vain. The best way to honour them is to strive to take their country forward.
This is the last edition of the Sunday Standard this year. We wish all our readers a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.See you in the new year. Enjoy. Do not indulge.
