South Africa is arguably the most vulnerable it has ever been in the new democratic dispensation. In 2020, the annual Edelman Barometer survey revealed that public trust in key societal institutions – government, business, media and academia – was lowest in South Africa among all countries that were surveyed. This does not augur well for our prospects to successfully navigate the Covid-19 crisis.

These institutions are not without blame for the decline in public trust in them. Government and business corruption, media sensationalism and academic insensitivity, in a society that has decidedly reproduced the racial and class disparities of apartheid, has withered the “rainbow nation” narrative. We are now a nation divided.

Societies under stress often rupture along their weakest fault lines. The escalating Covid crisis is amplifying unresolved tensions that have the potential to tear the nation apart even further. As the coronavirus multiplied exponentially, claiming the lives of more and more South Africans, it widened the fault lines in our society, dividing people into the very race-based boxes that our democracy was intended to dismantle. 

A plague of poverty has combined with a biological plague to exacerbate existing tensions, and it has spilled over into public discourse, most notably on social media. Social media analytics, from a variety of sources, indicates that these tensions worsened as we approached the first peak of infections.

Initially, a fair amount of admirable social cohesion was brokered in tackling the ill effects of the pandemic. Political parties presented a united front, and the planning – we were assured – would be guided by the best scientific advice that we could draw on. Government enjoyed a high level of support from both its political opponents as well as citizens. Civil society, business and ordinary people mobilised to help the poor. 

Fear drove us closer together and we responded by cooperating with one of the toughest lockdowns in the world. We put our faith in our key institutions, despite the fact that our faith in them had been steadily declining for over a decade. 

For a moment, we put our trust in our academics, government, the media and business to guide us through the crisis.

Yet this was not to last. In this new era of politics, political spin that actively discredits institutions has become routine. Positioning themselves as experts in every arena without qualification, politicians have proven especially guilty of deliberately undermining the very institutions that we require most to navigate crisis. 

Take Helen Zille, for example, who indiscriminately waded into the student protests to discredit critical race theorists and students alike. During the current crisis she became a proponent of the now discredited notion of “herd immunity”. With scarcely any expertise in either domain, she waded into these debates and drove wedges between institutions and society deeper. 

And she is not alone. Politicians, wanna-be politicians, industry leaders, social media influencers, celebrities, religious leaders, crackpots and conspiracists have all joined the milieu, resulting in a deafening noise that has all but drowned out the clear institutional signals we desperately need to navigate the crisis successfully. 

It is this devastating assault on the integrity of the institutions that we need to preserve social cohesion and organise our response to the pandemic that has deepened the fissures in our society. As doubts and uncertainties are exploited, ordinary people are lost in the gap between what we know about the virus and what we are still discovering as the pandemic unfolds. The consequence is that our ability to act coherently in response to the pandemic has significantly diminished. 

It is imperative that a new leadership and social compact is brokered on the understanding that this is not a moment to exploit differences for political and personal gain. This is a moment to forge unity among us and emerge with a stronger sense of who we are, what we stand for, and what we can achieve when we work together. 

Not only is it cruel and irresponsible to arrogantly wade into the fray armed with nothing but half-baked “facts” and speculation at best, and opportunism and wild conspiratorial delusions at worst, it puts the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people at risk. By obscuring the clarity of institutional messaging, they have confused the citizenry, leaving them without clear guidelines on how to change everyday behaviours to get society back up and running again. 

If people don’t take precautionary measures seriously and are in doubt about how to adapt to the new reality, we will endure spike after spike in infections, and businesses, schools and the like will be forced to close.

We will endure a staccato economy, a spiralling death count, and the healthcare burden of people who have to live with the lingering after-effects of the virus (the “long-haulers”).

Yet most strangely, in the vacuum that has emerged in the wake of public disconnection from our institutions, we have seen the emergence of bizarre, self-serving rhetoric. 

Ultranationalist, afrophobic messaging has skyrocketed, threatening to expose us yet again as the pariah of the continent. Alongside the infamously unknown @uLeratoPillay’s attacks on foreign migrants and refugees, smaller, more recent political parties such as South Africa First and politicians such as Herman Mashaba are ramping up afrophobic rhetoric, seeking to capitalise on misplaced fear and prejudice. Our once exalted position on the continent as a shining light for tolerance, freedom and constitutional democracy is now an unrecognisable wreck.

Thinly-veiled white supremacy advocates have attempted to disguise their messaging in terms of the “white genocide” narrative, positioning themselves – bizarrely – as comrades alongside the Black Lives Matter movement. This despite the fact that black people are far more likely to be murdered in South Africa. Moreover, the irony of identifying with Black Lives Matter while at the same time promoting the “All Lives Matter” message appears to escape the proponents of this narrative. Predictably, no “All Murders Matter” rhetoric has emerged from this camp. 

Race and class divides have risen to prominence, revealing a nation of two starkly disconnected realities. While the poor, predominantly black and brown people navigate the threat of hunger, white South Africans were ranting that Woolworths had to stop selling rotisserie chicken. 

To add to this unholy milieu, an EFF central command member was caught posing as a white woman on social media – Tracey Zille – to put out racist messaging that directed would-be “fellow” racists to internet pages off which he was earning advertising revenue.

In this new reality, truth is stranger than fiction. Catalysed by divisive rhetoric, profound distrust and disengagement from our core societal institutions – stoked by both official and unofficial actors – the virus proceeds to divide as it multiplies. And our nation is left the worse for it. 

It is imperative that a new leadership and social compact is brokered on the understanding that this is not a moment to exploit differences for political and personal gain. This is a moment to forge unity among us and emerge with a stronger sense of who we are, what we stand for, and what we can achieve when we work together. 

It is a moment to trust our institutions and to hold them accountable at the same time. It is also a moment to begin exposing those who would divide us, and to interrogate their motives.

The alternative – a society and politics driven by divisive, populist, ultranationalist rhetoric – is too scary to contemplate but it may well come to fruition, as it has in so many other nations across the world. DM