Report fro m Kenya #622 -- Systemic Racism: Europeans/Americans and Covid-19 in Africa.
David Zarembka
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Systemic Racism: Europeans/Americans and Covid-19 in Africa.
Report from Kenya #622 – September 25, 2020
Chart of 7 day average number of new cases per million of population in each country. South Africa has been the only country in Africa that failed to contain Covid-19, but notice how, after its peak in the middle of July when it was a little higher per million people than the United States, South Africa’s rate has fallen to 23 per cent of the rate in the United States. The other point to notice is that in the cases of Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria (the country with the largest population in Africa), their rates are so low compared to the United States that they hardly move off the bottom line of the chart. In short, Africa has succeeded where the United States and the United Kingdom have failed.
Note on davidzarembka.com: For some reason I am no longer able to log on to my davidzarembka.com wordpress account. Consequently I cannot post my weekly Reports from Kenya on davidzarembka.com. Wordpress has a long list of things I might do to be able to log in again, but I am no computer geek and have no idea on how to try their suggestions. I now keep my posts on my googlegroups account, but I don’t know the URL of a posting before I send it out and can’t put it at the top of the posting as I used to do with davidzarembka.com. After I send out the post, I put the URL on the master copy on my computer. If you therefore need the URL, please ask and I can send it to you. I know that this is a step backwards. I am sorry for the inconvenience. David Zarembka
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When the magnitude of the disaster of Covid-19 hit the world early in 2020, Europeans and Americans who commented on the situation were alarmed at what was going to happen in Africa. For example, see this quote made in April by Melinda Gates:
Covid-19 will be horrible in the developing world. My heart is in Africa. I am worried. The only reason why the reported cases of the coronavirus disease in Africa is low now is most likely because there have not been wide testing of people. The disease is going to bite hard on the continent. I see dead bodies in the streets of Africa.
In March, the WHO stated, “The coronavirus pandemic could be disastrous as fragile and almost non-existent healthcare systems in African countries are overwhelmed. A lack of personal protective equipment, difficulties in establishing treatment centers and an absence of critical care facilities might lead to a devastating loss of life.” In May, the WHO made a projection that “29 million to 44 million [people in Africa] could get infected in the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail.” Such dire predictions were overwhelmingly made by the European/American establishment.
These “experts” were totally wrong. Look at the chart at the top of this Report and you can visually see the comparisons between the US, UK, Italy, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya. Africa has 17 per cent of the world’s population but only 4.5 per cent of the worldwide cases and only 3.7 per cent of the world’s deaths. But if you exclude South Africa and the five North African countries, Sub-Saharan (black) Africa of a billion people has a rate of only 1.5 per cent of the worldwide cases and 0.9 per cent of the deaths.
The doomsayers about Covid-19 in Africa are now having to explain their previous negative predictions. Here are some of the commonly promoted reasons and why they are wrong.
- The first was that African people had some genetic difference that kept them from getting the virus. The problem with this is that this did not happen in South Africa and people of African descent in the United States and United Kingdom have higher rates of the disease than the white population. I no longer hear this reason being promoted.
- A second explanation was that Africa is hot and this kept the disease from spreading. A corollary of this is that Africans are in the sun a lot and absorb vitamin D and this somehow prevents the disease. The problem here is that Brazil has a similar climate and is out of control with the third highest number of cases in the world.
- Another explanation is that in most of Africa children are given an inoculation against tuberculosis. The problem here is that India gives these inoculations also and it now has the second higher rate in the world.
Why are these explanations indications of white European/American racism in action? Notice that all of these explanations give no agency to Africans themselves, their governments, or their health officials. It is all due to external factors. They are also all false, but the racists can’t see beyond their racism to understand the real reasons Africa have done so well. They are unable to accept that Africans is doing much, much better than the Europeans/Americans because of their own efforts. Moreover they cannot comprehend that they could learn from the positive successful examples in Africa.
What did the Africans do that the Europeans/Americans failed and in many cases are still failing to do.
- First African governments responded very quickly when the first cases arrived in their countries. For example, after the first few cases Uganda closed its borders and restricted travel within the country.
- Second, the African governments followed the advice of their health professional by quickly implementing strong countermeasures. Kenya closed all its schools only a few days after the first cases were reported in the country. South Africa, when the epidemic got out of control there, not only closed all bars, but banned the sale of all alcohol and cigarettes. Can you imagine the demonstrations, riots, and violence if a governor or mayor in the United States had tried such a tactic?
- Another aspect was that the African medical profession had learned how to react to tuberculosis, Ebola, and other diseases and had robust systems of containment in place that were quickly activated to confront Covid-19. When African countries, because they were poor, couldn’t get protective equipment, ventilators, masks, and other necessary items, they quickly began manufacturing them – a few weeks ago I bought some Kenyan manufactured N-95 masks in a pharmacy (drug store, for Americans) in Eldoret for $2.50 each.
- Fourth due to their prior experiences, African governments mostly followed the guidance of their lead medical professionals. For example, in Kenya one of the chief advisors to the government is a doctor who had been seconded to Liberia during the Ebola outbreak there and brought back to Kenya what he had learned there.
- Lastly, while compliance to the guidelines for wearing masks, hand washing, social distancing, temperature taking, and avoiding large gatherings of people have not been universal, there seems to be enough compliance by enough Africans to contain the spread of the virus. When we go to the mall in Eldoret, before we can enter the mall, the security guards make us wash our hands, test our temperature, give us hand sanitizer, and ensure that we are wearing masks. Again in the mall when we enter the supermarket, its security guard takes our temperature and gives us hand sanitizer.
These are all actions that Africans themselves did. The experts’ negative predictions were often based on the assumption that Africans wouldn’t do appropriate things to contain the virus. This assumes that African were too stupid, too uneducated, to “primitive” to look after their own health and well-being. This is racism written large.
Africa has responded in a more superior (and I purposely use this word), successful fashion in containing Covid-19 than the white, western world. Is the white western world willing to admit this and see what they can learn (“horror of horror”) from black Africans? I am waiting (perhaps in vain) to read an article with the title, “What white Americans/Europeans can learn from the successful Covid-19 responses from black sub-Saharan Africa.”
Melinda Gates and the experts at WHO are not racists like Donald Trump. Rather they are enmeshed in a world view that is systemically racist. Image the reaction if in March these people has said, “We have no worried about Africa because we are confident that they will contain Covid-19. Rather we are most worried that the United States and Europe will be unable to control the spread of the virus.” This would have been met with disbelief and laughter and anyone who said this would lose all creditably. White Americans and Europeans are in a racist, systemic zeitgeist bubble that they are unable to escape. Ending systemic racism is a much harder and involved process that confronting racist individuals. Acknowledging this success in Africa compared to the United States/Europe would be an ideal place to start.
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End Note: See here if you would like to read a similar article with a worldwide perspective written by Indi Samarajiva from Sri Lanka, The Overwhelming Racism Of COVID Coverage: Western media cannot write western failure. Here are two excerpts:
In the Dirty South, we are constantly excluded from the world via euphemism. You talk about ‘developed’ world or the ‘industrialized’ world or ‘advanced’ nations. But what does that mean? How developed are you if you don’t have public health? How industrialized are you if you cannot distribute tests and PPE? How advanced are you if your people won’t even wear a mask?
Poorer nations have done better than the rich because they had robust public health responses. Because they worked together. Because they reacted early. These are all lessons worth learning, but the west is unable to learn them because they’re simply too racist to see.
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David Zarembka
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