Turbulence in the Time of Corona
Making Sense of the South African Lockdown
Right now, the world has stuttered due to the collective impact of the coronavirus on our human systems.
The plane is flying, but the engines have stalled. Will we crash or not? The reality is worse, the air traffic controllers have said that every other plane in the air has stalled too. The runways are small. There is no predicting what happens next.
South Africa, no, the human race, is at a surreal juncture. We are staying at home, but it’s not a holiday. For the fortunate, the plan is to bed in and stay safe. For others, the reality of a lost work and lost income is much harsher than the reality of an intangible virus. It depends on the runway you have and how solvent you can stay, but what country we will return to after the storm?
There is a blunt South African saying, “Make a plan.” The other that sticks is, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
We might be a country of dichotomies and dualities, of divisions. Let’s not forget that we are also the country of Mandela, the journalist Winston Churchill, and the young Gandhi. The first heart transplant was performed right here, and the prototype Amazon Web Services juggernaut was built by a handful of South African computer scientists. We have also exported both a comedian and a tech mogul to the United States.
If you look deeply at South Africans, we are innovators, inventors, leaders, and collaborators. Yes, there is pressure. There is also panic, fear and anxiety, and the full spectrum of what can be felt in a crisis. Pressure, though, is revealing. It shows us who we are and who we have the potential to be. Pressure makes diamonds and it crushes pebbles, leaving no room for whimsy.
Collectively, like the plane, we are now in the sacred space of don’t know. There is extreme uncertainty in the world right now. But life has no guarantees, only experiences, opportunities, and calls to action.
Let’s land the plane together as an expression of our best qualities, in full knowledge that the choices of the next days, weeks, and months will define and shape the world we come back to.
