12/16/2023 0 Comments Storyspace vs tinderbox![]() Global poverty has declined significantly over the last 40 years - but because climate change could pose severe threats to Africa and South Asia, where most of the world’s poorest people live, the World Bank warns that, without swift action, it will be extremely difficult to further reduce extreme poverty. If the billions of people in the world’s middle- and low-income countries continue to feel hopelessly locked out of any chance at liberation from the virus, what will happen as the world is transformed by climate change? ![]() But it’s also important to remember that how we address today’s pandemic will have consequences for the many global threats to come. Because the virus respects no borders, it’s ours, too. As the months wear on, you’re going to see a lot more countries where trust levels and tolerance will start fraying.” “These are fragile places with many underlying vulnerabilities,” said Masood Ahmed, the president of the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit that aims to reduce poverty in developing nations. And in the absence of effective vaccination programs, there isn’t any room for hope, either. The coronavirus has gutted economies, depleted social, medical and security services, corroded trust and created opportunities for rampant violence and political persecution. Yet there is an obvious common thread that suggests a systemic failure: A pandemic that refuses to abate is ripping societies apart. What is happening in South Africa is different from what’s happening in Haiti, whose president was assassinated last week, or in Cuba, where thousands took to the streets in protest over rising poverty and state indifference, or in Colombia, Brazil, Lebanon and other places where protests and unrest have flared up in recent months. But on much of the rest of the planet, it is still dark night. Thanks to mass vaccination, it’s beginning to feel like morning in wealthy parts of the world, notwithstanding the social and political dislocations the virus has created in the United States. The possibility of such collapse terrifies me - not just as a native South African but as an American. The coronavirus may have dealt South Africa a blow that even AIDS could not, driving the country of my birth down the path of madness, a society slumping into the abyss. All the while, nobody seems to know what’s actually happening, as misinformation rockets through a locked-down, screen-dependent population.īut now it looks as if something key has been lost. On Monday, just as Ramaphosa promised in a droning national address to get tough on looters, a split screen showed a crowd meeting no resistance as it broke into a bank - but not an ordinary bank, a blood bank. ![]() What began last week as scattered protests over the jailing of Jacob Zuma, the nation’s former president, has turned into a plunder free of meaning and intention, so indiscriminate that it seems almost cathartic. The nation’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, warned against ethnic conflict, a threat his critics called groundless and that only increased tensions.īut as I swiped through the pictures and videos flying across my South African relatives’ group chats this week, I was struck by the many posts that suggested an even bitterer flavor of doom - a kind of psychological crackup. In much of the central district of the port city of Durban, the police were overwhelmed, and shopping malls and stores were gutted. Emergency workers have been attacked in several places one medical service began transporting the injured in an armored ambulance. On Tuesday, a woman in a high-rise building apparently set alight by looters tossed her child to the hoped-for safety of a crowd far below. ![]() The images flooding out of riot-torn South Africa are horrifying.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |