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The Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic has humbled the world and raised pertinent questions about society’s development institutions. Different government leaders across the globe are developing responses to the impact of Covid-19.
These policy interventions are aimed at addressing the immediate impact of the epidemic, which exacerbate existing inequalities in society. Structural race, class and gender differences shape citizens’ abilities to resist or combat the virus.
This varied experience is amplified in the epidemiological evidence on Covid-19 health trends in the US. Several reports illustrate that death rates among black and Hispanic Americans are higher than their white counterparts.
Policymakers all over the world must contend with underlying socioeconomic disparities shaping how Covid-19 affects citizens. The contemporary public discourse understandably focuses on short-term interventions centred on healthcare and economic support measures.
These efforts are commendable, but I think society is missing out on an opportunity to innovate and reflect on alternative development strategies.
Historical accounts on previous global crises prove that these moments inspired a shift in how society constructs development and policy orientation.
Covid-19 presents an opportunity for policymakers and the general populace to redesign how humanity approaches long-term development. This moment necessitates critical reflection on several salient lessons.
The first essential lesson is the redundancy of hyper-specialisation and fragmented policy planning. Some stakeholders in Covid-19 debates create a fictitious divide between health, human rights and broader socioeconomic development factors.
This erroneous perspective pits health interventions against structural political economy development priorities. It ignores the value of transdisciplinary approaches, which emphasise inherent connections between different human development areas. Innovative political economy subverts the rigid expertise boundaries embedded in contemporary policymaking.
The 2018 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) report, Epidemics and the Health of African Nations, emphasises this point in several ways. The findings in this report illustrate how pandemic trends are best understood within a holistic policy framework, which acknowledges that health is not a peripheral issue in political economy debates.
First, South Africa’s Covid-19 response and future development plans must be coordinated so that stakeholders avoid poor coordination or fragmented policy making. Policymakers are advised to “work between, across and beyond several disciplines” as articulated in Mistra’s 2011 Transdisciplinarity publication.
Second, Covid-19 teaches citizens to value the informal economy and its ability to sustain livelihoods in low-income communities. It is a cushion for many citizens who are structurally excluded from participation in the formal economy. There is evidence which suggests that some citizens oscillate between formal and informal economy markets.
They participate in both markets to guarantee sufficient income for their households, which has fallen because of systemic wage reduction and atypical employment. But informal economic participation must not be reduced to structural exclusion and a survivalist poverty alleviation strategy. It is a form of developmental economic agency that can address income disparities, unemployment and unequal spatial development.
Furthermore, informal entrepreneurship provides some answers for addressing the failures of BEE. This point is emphasised in Mistra’s recently published book, Beyond Tenderpreneurship: Rethinking Black Business and Economic Empowerment.
The authors argue that informal economy entrepreneurship is capable of revitalising local economic development in a conducive policy framework. This potential cannot be realised in the dominant policy context, which relegates informal entrepreneurship and employment to the periphery. Future development strategies in the country will have to place informal economic activity support measures at the centre of policymaking.
The third lesson form Covid-19 relates to how society comprehends labour. This pandemic has exposed society’s undervaluation of care work, which is essential for social reproduction and epidemic response strategies.
Care work is undertaken by community health workers, home-based carers, social workers and nurses. The nature of this work has become increasingly precarious. Budget cuts and various forms of outsourcing inform this trend, as many care workers carry the social costs of decreased expenditure on public goods.
It is important to note the gender disparities embedded in care work and how these affect women’s livelihoods. This care labour is essential for public policy responses to Covid-19 and requires additional support.
The conventional approach that emphasises industrial labour without paying sufficient attention to care work is not sustainable. Future policy development thinking should direct additional public resources and support towards the care economy.
Mabasa is a senior researcher at Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection
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