impact of covid 19 in south africa essay

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The Impact of COVID-19 in South Africa

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By Dr. Emmanuel Sekyere, Prof. Narnia Bohler-Muller, Prof. Charles Hongoro, and Dr. Mokhantso Makoae

The world is currently struggling to control a global public health pandemic—COVID-19—that is spreading very fast with diverse levels of fatalities in different regions and countries. Starting in Wuhan, China in late 2019, COVID-19 has become a global epidemic within a very short time. At the moment, Europe— especially Italy, Spain, the UK, and France—and the U.S. have been hardest hit in terms of infections and fatalities despite their more sophisticated health service delivery systems. This has raised great concern for the African continent due to the continent’s relatively weak health systems compared to Europe and the Global North, and the wide expanse of areas on the continent with no health services or systems in place.

This paper addresses the South African government’s response to COVID-19 and the impact of the disease on South African society. The country announced its first case of COVID-19 on March 5, 2020. By March 15, 2020, the number of cases had risen to 61. President Cyril Ramaphosa then declared a national state of disaster and announced a number of measures to be undertaken to contain the spread of the virus. These measures, detailed in figure 1 below, are continuously being reviewed by the government with the aim of responding as effectively as possible to the fast-evolving pandemic. For example, since the measures were first announced, the number of people allowed to gather in one location has been reduced from 100 to 50.

Several governance structures were quickly put in place to manage the spread of this disease, including an Inter-ministerial committee on COVID-19, an Emergency Operations Center, and a National Command Council chaired by the president himself. Still, by March 23, 2020, the number of infections had increased from 274 to 402. The president, in collaboration with the National Command Council, declared a 21-day national lockdown commencing on March 26, 2020 to help curb the spread of the disease and minimize its impact on South African society. As of April 16, 2020, South Africa had recorded 2,506 confirmed infections, 34 deaths, and 410 recoveries. Hence, restricting the movement of people, practicing social distancing, and tracing all those who have been in contact with an infected person (all of which are being practiced globally to varying degrees) appear to be effective ways of controlling the spread of the disease. Several coronavirus helplines have also been established for immediate response from the police, health service, rapid response to crime, fire service, and other service delivery needs of society.

The COVID-19 epidemic has several diverse implications and impacts on South African society including in the social, economic, health, environmental, and technological realms.

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• Published: 02 March 2021

COVID-19 in South Africa: outbreak despite interventions

• Malte Schröder 1 ,
• Andreas Bossert 2 , 3 ,
• Moritz Kersting 3 ,
• Sebastian Aeffner 4 ,
• Justin Coetzee 5 ,
• Marc Timme 1 , 6 , 7 &
• Jan Schlüter 3 , 6  

Scientific Reports volume  11 , Article number:  4956 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Nonlinear phenomena

The future dynamics of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in African countries is largely unclear. Simultaneously, required strengths of intervention measures are strongly debated because containing COVID-19 in favor of the weak health care system largely conflicts with socio-economic hardships. Here we analyze the impact of interventions on outbreak dynamics for South Africa, exhibiting the largest case numbers across sub-saharan Africa, before and after their national lockdown. Past data indicate strongly reduced but still supracritical growth after lockdown. Moreover, large-scale agent-based simulations given different future scenarios for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality with 1.14 million inhabitants, based on detailed activity and mobility survey data of about 10% of the population, similarly suggest that current containment may be insufficient to not overload local intensive care capacity. Yet, enduring, slightly stronger or more specific interventions, combined with sufficient compliance, may constitute a viable option for interventions for South Africa.

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Introduction

The severe acute respiratory syndrom coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has reached more than 200 countries and territories across all continents 1 , 2 . By death toll, the resulting Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak will likely soon become the largest pandemic of the 21st century so far 3 . There is currently no specific medical intervention known against SARS-CoV-2 and preventive vaccination options are not yet available. The resulting vast number, broad geographical distribution, and intensity of globally enacted socio-economic interventions is unprecedented in modern human history.

Mainland China was the first region hit by the outbreak in January 2020 and had taken rapid and severe interventions including an almost complete lockdown for 11 weeks. It thereby succeeded to suppress the outbreak dynamics to subexponential growth patterns 4 and in April 2020 is reporting a total of 83,500 cases and at most 130 new cases daily for now more than 5 weeks 2 . As of April 30th, several countries in Europe are reporting more than 100,000 cases each and the United States alone reports above 1 Million cases.

At the same time, Africa as a continent with a population of 1.3 billion people (as of 2018  5 ) has reported only about 24,000 cases 2 , 6 , 7 . Of those, the largest number of COVID-19 patients is reported in South Africa with about 5300 cases and 100 (about 1.9%) deaths as of April 30, 2020 2 , 8 . Across all these countries, the total number of cases is increasing. Due to heterogeneous conditions and often broadly undersampled testing and reporting, the future outbreak dynamics in Africa remains largely unclear.

Across the African continent, national economic constraints, individual poverty, low health literacy rates, weaker health care systems and cultural practices lead to reduced option spaces for interventions on personal and governmental levels and may all contribute to more severe consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak and negatively influence containment as well as recording, testing and medical treatment 9 . Similar conditions will hold for most countries of the Global South, calling for particular attention on African countries 10 .

In general, health care systems in African countries feature only a small number of available intensive care units (ICUs) compared to most countries of the Global North 11 , 12 . At the same time, African countries are under particular pressure due to economic constraints. Besides strong repercussions on national economic productivity expected for any large-scale lockdown, a large fraction of the population is unable to fully comply with severe lockdown measures due to their personal financial or social situation. An African task force for coronavirus preparedness and response (AFTCOR) has been established to manage these combined and conflicting constraints both for the current COVID-19 outbreak and for future preparedness 13 . Their work focuses on enabling medical diagnosis and screening options, clinical treatment of COVID-19 patients, infection prevention and control in health care facilities, supply chain management, and the communication of risks to experts and the public. Qualitative and quantitative time series analysis on reported cases in Africa and estimates of the future outbreak dynamics by evaluating implications of containment options essentially underlie but are not in the focus of their work.

South Africa offers a comparatively high capacity of intensive care units (ICUs) to respond to outbreaks, with estimates ranging from maximally 7195 ICU beds theoretically in existence to 2926 practically available nationwide across both public and private sectors 14 . The order of magnitude of these numbers is consistent with earlier reports 15 . However, the factually available ICU beds have likely declined during the past decade necessitating rationing and triage (prioritisation) decisions that have been frequently necessary in South Africa even in times before COVID-19, particularly in the publicly funded health sector 14 , 16 . Moreover ICU capacity in the private sector is not readily and generally accessible.

Influence of lockdown on past case numbers

On March 5, 2020, the first COVID-19 patient has been confirmed in South Africa and after starting with specific smaller measures from March 15 onwards, the South African government enacted a national lockdown effective March 27, 2020. This lockdown includes measures such as the complete closure of childcare , institutions of primary and higher education as well as all public leisure activities, severe physical distancing rules, an estimated 70% reduction of shopping , 85% of on-site work force and a 90% reduction in other activities. An initial formal reduction of shared publicly available mobility services by about 75% was, after protests, revised to about 30% reduction 17 (estimates by GoMetro, South Africa). These shared mobility services provide a large fraction of transportation and constitute one of the special conditions in South Africa and many other African countries 18 . For instance in South Africa, instead of formal public transit, transportation is dominated by private, semi-regulated minibus taxis with typically 15 seats 18 . Due to their mass usage, usually high occupancy and the close contact between passengers in the vehicles, these mobility services may contribute substantially to the spread of COVID-19.

Fitting the number of total reported cases in South Africa before and after the national lockdown (Fig.  1 ) indicates that the lockdown drastically reduces the relative increase in case numbers, as quantified by the growth exponent, decreasing from \(r=0.32\) per day in the beginning of the outbreak to about \(r=0.27\) per day just before the lockdown and down to \(r=0.038\) per day after the lockdown, reflecting an increase of the doubling time from about 2.5 to about 18 days (Fig.  1 A,B). The immediate switch to slower growth at the date of the official lockdown may be originating from several factors the detailed influence of which remain unknown.

COVID-19 in Africa and South Africa. ( A , B ) The number of confirmed COVID-19 patients in Africa (gray squares) and specifically South Africa (black disks) from March 1, 2020 until April 16, 2020, on ( A ) linear and ( B ) logarithmic scales. Best exponential fits (colored lines) yield growth rates r where the total number of (reported) infected patients \(N \propto \exp (r \, t)\) where t measures time in days. ( C ) State space representing the number of newly reported patients as a function of the total of reported people infected (including the recovered), eliminating absolute time. Straight solid line of slope 1 indicates pure exponential growth. The impact of the lockdown executed on March 27 is clearly visible (vertical lines in ( A , B )).

As the number of cases in South Africa makes up a substantial share of all reported cases throughout Africa, the effect also becomes visible in the data for the entire continent (Fig.  1 A,B). For Africa as a whole, growth exponents dropped from about \(r=0.22\) to \(r=0.086\) . The data for Africa suggest a further decrease of the exponent, ongoing after the South African lockdown.

While the growth exponents have been substantially reduced, between a factor of 7.1 (South Africa) and a factor of 2.6 (all of Africa), the growth remains exponential at least 3 weeks into the lockdown. This is in stark contrast to the outbreak dynamics in Mainland China, where the strict containment measures of the Hubei region has led to subexponential growth 19 followed by a massive decrease of new case numbers within weeks after lockdown 2 . The initially unbroken exponential growth trend in South Africa is also indicated by the number of newly infected people per week steeply increasing when displayed as a function of the total number of infected (Fig.  1 C), instead of curving down.

Modeling future scenarios

The current national lockdown has been extended from an original three weeks (until April 17, 2020) with relaxations now suggested for the beginning of May, 2020. We thus ran scenario simulations to estimate future case numbers and probe responses to different intervention strengths and durations. We employed a computational data-driven, agent based transport model for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 1.14 million inhabitants) 20 with lockdown fractions of work, leisure, and shopping activities and complete lockdown of childcare and educational institutions, in line with measures currently implemented in South Africa. To reflect potential non-compliance with enacted lockdown measures, the simulations took only a 85% reduction of other activities; for minibus taxi services we took a 50% effective reduction of passengers, to reflect the tradeoff between non-compliance and the reduction in demand due to less people required or wishing to travel caused by the other lockdown measures and the outbreak. The parameter assumptions are based on mobility data provided by the South African local mobility business GoMetro (see “ Methods ” section for further details of model setup).

Estimated COVID-19 cases for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, South Africa. ( A , B ) Simulation of the outbreak without interventions (red fit) and with current interventions (orange fit) on ( A ) linear and ( B ) logarithmic scales. Thin grey lines represent individual simulations, the solid black lines represent their averages. Growth rates are consistent with the observations for South Africa in the beginning of the outbreak (without lockdown) and after the lockdown (compare Fig.  1 ). ( C ) State space representing the number of newly reported patients as a function of the total of reported people infected (including the recovered), eliminating absolute time. While the lockdown measures slow the spread of the outbreak, the growth remains exponential for some time (compare also Fig.  1 C).

Influence of intervention policies. ( A ) Number of active infections over time. Solid lines indicate averages across realizations, shaded areas indicate standard deviation. Color encodes the four scenarios: lockdown lifted May 1st (red), lockdown relaxed by 25% on May 15 (orange), maintain current lockdown until June 30 (yellow), and enforcing lockdown or increasing compliance from May 1, 2020 (green). ( B ) Number of critical patients and estimated capacity available in NMBM (horizontal dotted line). Data encoding as in ( A ). The dashed vertical line illustrates the available ICU capacity. ( C , D ) Maximum number of patients requiring intensive care during the outbreak until end of June 2020, across scenarios (color code as before). Bars indicate averages across realizations and standard deviation, small disks individual realizations. The solid lines indicate the peak of the average trend, which is below the peaks of the individual realizations as these peaks may occur at different times. Note that these numbers may increase after June 2020, for example when maintaining the lockdown (compare upwards trend in ( B )). All data based on 100 realizations of agent-based simulations for each of the four scenarios for NMBM, South Africa.

Calibrating our simulations to the growth rate before lockdown ( \(r=0.33 \pm 0.02\) average and standard deviation over 100 realizations), our results with the estimated restirctions are consistent with the growth exponents of the total number of infected individuals after national lockdown ( \(r=0.04 \pm 0.02\) average and standard deviation over 100 realizations), see Fig.  2 A,B. The exponents cannot be specified more exactly due to the unpredictable stochastic factors in the transmission process creating substantial variations in particular at low case numbers, sampled over in simulations with one hundred random realizations each. Importantly, there are simulated case dynamics that display an early (within April, 2020) saturation of the total number of cases at 10,000 or below. However, the ensemble of simulations of the lockdown scenario suggests an ongoing outbreak either entirely without saturation or with early but non-persistent saturation and renewed increase, likely in May. Figure  2 C displays the same data of the dynamics in a state space characterizing the epidemics without referring to absolute time (as in Fig.  1 C), thereby enabling to compare system-wide potential pathways. The results illustrate that current lockdown measures substantially slow the spread of the outbreak in all realizations, but only in 4 out of 100 realizations the outbreak ends before 10,000 people become infected in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality alone.

To evaluate the expected outbreak dynamics and the maximal number of critical patients requiring intensive care, we studied four different scenarios by agent-based simulations, again 100 realizations per scenario (Fig.  3 ). Entirely lifting the currently enacted lockdown on May 1 would cause an immediate rise of infected patient numbers and a delayed rapid rise of critical patient numbers drastically beyond the ICU capacity available in NMBM (estimated to be 50 based on downscaling (proportional, by population size) the 267 ICU beds expected to be available in the entire Eastern Cape Province 21 ). Whereas the exact numbers will depend on details of the simulation, further simulations (not shown) indicate a manifold overload of ICU capacity also after varying mobility parameters. Lifting lockdown by 25% two weeks later, i.e. on May 15, still would cause massive rise in case numbers and ICU overload in early June. Maintaining current lockdown conditions strongly slows the outbreak, yet our simulations suggest that such interventions together with current compliance are marginally insufficient to contain the epidemic long term and keep the number of critical patients below ICU capacity (Fig.  3 B,C), as suggested already by our data analysis of past case numbers (Fig.  1 ). Finally a fourth scenario of slightly strengthening current interventions, either by slightly stricter, possibly even more specific lockdown regulations, by increasing compliance, or a combination of both (90% reduction of shopping and other, 95% reduction of work activities and complete restriction of all other activities including public mobility in the simulations), may keep the number of critical COVID-19 patients at or below the ICU capacity and may largely contain the epidemic by end of June 2020.

The analysis of reported past case data is robust and suggests that the outbreak currently still grows too quickly to contain the number of critical COVID-19 patients significantly below available ICU capacities nation-wide. Observations like the immediate downtrending when the lockdown comes into effect in South Africa may be potentially explained by, e.g., the number of patients tested per day having substantially increased initially 8 , 22 or tests having potentially been delayed at the very onset. In any given region, the first person infected is likely detected only after exhibiting symptoms while later cases may be identified by preemptive contact tracing and thereby identified as they appear, ideally before showing symptoms. Other contributing factors may include stochastic small number fluctuations occurring at the onset of any epidemic outbreak, and already existing awareness of the COVID-19 outbreak and countermeasures taken before the official national lockdown.

The continuous downtrending of the growth rate across all of Africa may be associated with measures taken up at different points in time in the most strongly affected countries of Northern Africa, and the vastly heterogeneous case numbers, test coverage and reporting of cases across African countries, all entangling with the reduced number, but still large share of South African COVID-19 patients. The main potential causes of errors in the analysis of past data may be biased or undersampled testing and reporting of case numbers.

Predicting future case numbers and the number of critical patients under different scenario conditions is much more difficult. The most difficult challenge is the bridging of scales between known or estimated country-wide overall conditions and specific urban level scenarios (at 1.14 million people) that are again subsampled at about 10% of the population, not primarily due to simulational constraints but due to the availability of socio-economic and travel data for about 100,000 people only 20 . Combined with the COVID-19 outbreak being at an early stage, the number of infected patients is of an order of magnitude between \(10^1\) and \(10^3\) in NMBM, thereby causing strong stochastic number fluctuations that make individual predictions unreliable. We attempted to compensate for such fluctuations partially by running ensemble simulations for 100 random realizations, with a random subsample of initial patients infected (and thus varying their location, household size, employment status etc.). As the results are based on limited ensemble simulations, they likely underestimate the probability of extreme outcomes such as strong increase or random decay of the outbreak.

The results reported above suggest that current lockdown levels may be just marginally insufficient to prevent a massive COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa. As the increase in case numbers is still exponential and not subexponential as reported for Mainland China 19 , South Africa may be still in the unfortunate situation to become for the African continent what Italy has been for Europe 23 , with potentially devastating consequences.

A rapid large-scale infection within weeks to a few months, the likely outcome if the national lockdown was lifted or relaxed early May 8 , implies a manifold overload of ICU capacity. Interventions slightly stronger than those implemented today, or even a higher degree of compliance to the enacted lockdown alone may constitute a viable chance for effective countermeasures for regions in South Africa and potentially for large parts of the African continent.

The current model setting does not explicitly include demographical resolution of the population in the modelling of the disease progression because data sets of behavioral and activity patterns are not available in a demographically resolved way. The population of agents and their activities still represents an accurate sample across the whole demographic range. While we expect the explicit modelling of different demographics to quantitatively modify our results, the very nature of the transition observed (from decreasing to rapidly increasing case numbers depending on the severity of countermeasures) is robust against any such detailed changes. Future studies for this or other regions with available detailed demography data may shine further light on the detailed influence of demography and its correlation to activity patterns, potentially with spatial resolution at the level of city quarters.

However, a number of boundary conditions beyond those known for past major hubs of the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like Mainland China, the United States or Italy 23 need to be taken into account simultaneously. Most African countries find themselves under much stronger socio-economic and health care system constraints than countries of the Global North.

For instance, a large fraction of the work force both is at lower-income levels and simultaneously has no fall-back option to remote work. As many of such work activities are not tagged “essential” in the sense of the lockdown, people often have zero income or immediately fall into extreme poverty. Moreover, even where remote work is possible, it comes with additional challenges 24 . Still, South Africa is potentially in a better position than many other African countries, so the conclusions (for South Africa specifically) might be conservative in this sense.

The South African health situation includes a high risk of COVID-19 coinfections for patients with, e.g., HIV/AIDS or forms of tuberculosis (TBC). It implies additional challenges, which are concerned to have a detrimental effect on the criticality of COVID-19 infections or medcine and health care supply 25 , 26 , 27 . According to the WHO 2019, South Africa ranks 4th globally in the number of TBC infections per capita and 3rd for those coinfected with TBC and HIV. Moreover, the South African population infected with TBC alone is about 320,000 (0.5%, about 20 times higher rate than in Europe) and a total of 7.7 million people (13%) are infected with HIV as of 2018 28 , 29 .

Regulatory decision against COVID-19 cannot only take care of short-term economic constraints 17 . A large-scale outbreak and massive ICU overload may have drastic consequences for the country as a whole, including societal and economic but also psychological, and ethical issues (compare 30 ). Thinking of economic constraints should also imply of long-term implications, for both economy and society. This perspective underlines again the coaction advocated by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG 3), Sustainable Cities and Transportation (SDG 11), and Reduced Inequality both within and among countries (SGD 10) in the context of COVID-19.

An integrated perspective on such goals may help paving the way to a fair and sustained solution of the COVID-19 crisis and future pandemics across African countries as well as for individuals, groups and regions in a position much more fragile than common for countries of the Global North, as also underlined by the proposed CoHERE programme 31 .

Finally, our results indicate that large-scale agent-based simulations integrating microscopic mobility and activity data on the individual person level and for areas with \(10^6\) or more inhabitants, in combination with fundamental nonlinear and stochastic dynamics analysis may serve as a valuable tool of qualitatively predicting longer-term outcomes of epidemic spreading dynamics under a variety of scenarios.

All data is based on the aggreagated COVID-19 case numbers collected by Johns Hopkins University 2 , downloadable from https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series (accessed at 20-04-20). The data provides the total number of confirmed (reported) cases per day and per country (for Africa, higher resolution is available for some other countries). We aggregate the available country-level data for all African countries to compute the per-day case numbers for Africa shown in Fig.  1 .

Analysis of COVID-19 case number dynamics

We compute the growth rates r from the data based on linear regression of the logarithm of the total number of confirmed cases in a ten day interval based around the official beginning of the lockdown in South Africa. The fits shown in Fig.  1 are only shown in the interval where they were performed, before lockdown in the interval 15-03-20 to 25-03-20 (up to two days before the lockdown, \(r=0.27\) ), after the lockdown in the interval 30-03-20 to 09-04-20 (beginning three days after the lockdown, \(r=0.038\) ). For comparability, we use the same intervals to compute the growth rate of cases in Africa as a whole.

We remark that the instantaneous growth rates change over time, especially before the lockdown. The initial growth rate in South Africa reported in the main text and noted in Fig.  1 is based on a fit in the interval 10-03-20 to 20-03-20 with higher growth rate ( \(r=0.32\) ). Uncertainties of the reported results of the regression are much smaller ( \(R^2 > 0.99\) , relative error of the growth rate less than \(3\%\) ) than the variation of the growth rate over time.

Basics of data-driven agent-based model

The simulation results reported in Figs.  2 and 3 are based on a detailed agent-based simulation of 10% of the population (114,346 agents, such that each agent represents 10 people) of NMBM conducted with MATSim (version 12.0-SNAPSHOT) 32 . The (synthetic) population of agents that serves as input for the MATSim simulation is that suggested by Joubert et al. 33 , aggregating survey data on social and economic conditions as well as detailed travel diaries. In the simulation, each agent chooses a transport mode and route based on their activity schedule (type and place of planned activities such as work, school or shopping). This process is repeated until the agents route choice settles into a (statistically) stationary state.

We adjusted the standard MATSim framework to account for the high prevalance of semi-formal publicly accessible transport options via minibus taxis 18 . We model this transport mode via a model for Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) for MATSim 34 , allowing the agents to call a dynamically routed bus to specific stop locations. As this model does not perfectly reproduce the minibus taxi system as it typically operates in South Africa, we adjust the fleet size (2300 buses) of these minibus taxis and their capacity (15 seats) to reproduce the actually observed utilization (2374 minibus taxis with an official average capacity of 15 passengers in 2014 in NMBM 35 ).

The resulting contact network (describing potential interactions of agents with one another during their activities and commutes) from the MatSim simulation is then used as input for the EpiSim simulation 36 ( https://github.com/matsim-org/matsim-episim , master, accessed April 11, 2020), modelling the epidemic spreading on this contact network. The probability \(P_{n,t}\) for an agent n to be infected during an activity that ends at time t is based on the other (infectious) agents m it is in contact with, the duration of exposure \(\tau _{nm,t}\) , the (relative and constant) shedding rate \(q_{m,t}\) with which a infectious agent distributes the virus, and the (relative) intensity \(i_{m,t}\) of contact during the activity such that

The free parameter \(\theta\) is used to calibrate the model to fit the observed growth rate. Here, we take \(\theta = 1.5\times 10^{-6}\) to match the uninhibited growth rate observed \(r_{\text {max}} = 0.32\) in the case data for South Africa.

The activities considered in the EpiSim model are Home , Work , Primary Education , Higher Education , Shopping , Leisure , Dropby , Other and Minibus taxi commute . Agents do not risk infection by commuting by private car (if available) or walking. Here, work , shopping have the same contact intensity as leisure , \(i_{\text {leisure}} = 5\) . The activities dropby and other have contact intensities \(i_{\text {dropby}} = 7\) and \(i_{\text {other}} = 3\) , respectively. To account for the specific condition in South Africa compared to the original location (Berlin, Germany) that the model was developed for, we adjusted several parameters affecting the intensity of contact during specific activities. In particular, we increased the contact intensity for the activities home to \(i_{\text {home}} = 6\) (compared to 3 in the original EpiSim setting) due to general living conditions and the contact intensity during commutes with minibus taxis to \(i_{MBT} = 20\) (compared to 10 for public transport in the original EpiSim setting). Other parameters are left as in the original EpiSim setting 36 , such that susceptible agents first become infected but not contagious , then contagious after four days, where \(20\%\) of the affected agents self-quarantine on day 6 for the duration of the illness and cannot infect any other agents. These infected agents either recover after a total of 16 days or become seriously sick after after a total of 10 days (4.5% probability) and potentially critical on the next day (20% of all seriously sick agents). These cases terminate after a total of 23 days.

All simulations start with 10 infectious agents (day 4 of the course of the disease) on 09-04-20. These agents are selected uniformly at random from the total population.

The scenarios explored in Fig.  3 adjust the share of agents that perform a certain activity by different factors (see also main text). In the lift lockdown scenario, all activities are unrestricted after May 1, described by an activity factor of \(\alpha = 1\) (100%) for all activities. Accordingly, reducing the \(\alpha\) of an activity to 0.5 would exclude 50% of the agents who would normally carry out that activity.

The current lockdown conditions are described by a work activity factor \(\alpha _{\text {work}} = 0.15\) (85% reduction), \(\alpha _{\text {shopping}} = 0.3\) , \(\alpha _{\text {other}} = 0.15\) and a complete shutdown of childcare, education and leisure and dropby activities ( \(\alpha = 0\) ). Additionally, the minibus taxi activity was reduced by \(50\%\) , \(\alpha _{MBT} = 0.5\) .

To model an enforced lockdown (or higher compliance with prescribed rules), we restrict shopping and other activities to \(\alpha _{\text {shopping}} = \alpha _{\text {other}} = 0.1\) , work to \(\alpha _{\text {work}} = 0.05\) and completely shut down public mobility, \(\alpha _{MBT} = 0\) . To model a relaxed lockdown, we assume that all activity restrictions are reduced by \(50\%\) such that \(\alpha _{\text {relax}} = 1 - (1-\alpha _{lockdown})/2\) , based on the current restrictions.

Scenario-based estimates

All results reported in Figs.  2 and 3 show the average from 100 realizations (random initial conditions and stochastic infection process). Growth rates of the simulation results are obtained from linear regression of the average evolution in the intervals 15-04-20 to 25-04-20 (without lockdown) and 20-04-20 to 10-05-20 (with lockdown). The reported uncertainty (see main text) is the standard deviation of the computed growth rate in the same interval for the individual realizations.

To compute the average number of new infections per week as a function of the total number of infected, we averaged over identical values of the total number of infected (instead of over time), where we combine data into logarithmic bins \([n, 1.1\,n]\) , starting at \(n_{\text {min}} = 10\) infected.

The peak critical patients reported in Fig.  3 indicate the global maximum of the number of (concurrent) critical patients in the simulation until July 1. We note that this does not necessarily represent the global maximum over all time as case number may still increase after this date, in particular in the relax and maintain lockdown scenarios.

Data availability

The population data analysed during the current study are available under https://doi.org/10.17632/dh4gcm7ckb.1 . The epidemic simulation framework used during the current study is available under https://github.com/matsim-org/matsim-episim .

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Acknowledgements

MS and MT acknowledge support by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and the Saxonian State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC-2068—390729961—Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL) and the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed).

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M.S., M.T. and J.S. conceived and designed research. M.S. and M.T. worked out and evaluated the analysis of past case data. A.B. and M.K. designed, set up and adapted the simulation software and ran simulations, supervised by J.S. A.B., M.K. and J.S. evaluated the simulation data, advised by M.S. and M.T. M.S. and M.T. provided theoretical background and advised on general data analysis and data presentation. S.A. advised on health care data and provided medical background. M.S. and M.T. wrote the basic version of the manuscript. J.C. provided local data and advised on conditions for mobility simulations. All authors interpreted the results and contributed to revising and editing the manuscript.

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COVID-19 : how the lockdown has affected the health of the poor in South Africa

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The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked substantial damage on human lives and the economy in South Africa. But the impact of the measures used to combat the pandemic, such as lockdowns, have not been even. The pandemic has likely worsened the income inequalities that characterise the country’s economy.

Vulnerable populations such as low income earners in informal and precarious employment have been most affected by job losses and the resulting income loss. Moreover, while COVID-19 has affected every facet of people’s lives, it is essentially a health problem. The loss of jobs and income is likely to result in reduced ability to access healthcare and a nutritious diet. This, in turn, will negatively impact on people’s health.

Read more: Close look at some South African households gives insights into COVID-19 vulnerability

We recently conducted a study to estimate how closely health was related to income, in the context of COVID-19 in South Africa. We used data from the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, a nationally representative survey collected in May/June 2020.

The survey collected information on health, income and other relevant factors during the higher levels of the lockdown. We compared these findings to data collected from the same individuals in 2017.

We found that poor populations bore a disproportionately higher burden of poor health. This was the case in both 2017 and the COVID-19 period. A remarkable finding was that income-related health inequality in the COVID-19 period was about six times that obtained in 2017. This shows that income had a much stronger relationship with health during the COVID-19 crisis than before.

Explaining the inequalities

To measure health inequalities related to income, we used a statistical measure known as the concentration index. The key factors that predicted the observed income-related health inequalities in the COVID-19 era were race, hunger, and income. Each of these factors worsened income-related health inequalities.

Race affected the inequalities in two ways: Africans were more likely to be poor and report being in poor health compared to their white counterparts. The same was true of hunger. On the other hand, income worsened health inequalities through the richer being less likely to be in poor health.

The impact of race on health outcomes, especially in this period, corroborates prior evidence in South Africa and elsewhere. Black people are among the worst affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa. One of the avenues through which this occurs is higher exposure to hazardous jobs such as working as cleaners or in fumigation of contaminated areas.

The relative disadvantage of historically disadvantaged racial groups to pandemics is well known – especially in the present situation. For instance, African Americans have disproportionately high infection and mortality rates due to COVID-19 in the United States.

Similarly, limited access to quality healthcare can contribute to race-based health inequalities. South Africa’s health system is deeply segmented. It consists of a well-resourced private sector – mostly funded by expensive medical aid scheme membership – and an overburdened public sector which caters for the majority poor masses (mostly Africans). It is estimated that only 10% of Africans belonged to medical aid schemes compared to 73% of whites in 2018.

This two-tier system is in dire need of reform if the country is to tackle health inequalities. Hopefully the country’s move to universal health coverage as envisaged in the proposed National Health Insurance Scheme will mitigate these inequalities and inequities.

Read more: Why South Africa needs to ensure income security beyond the pandemic

The second factor was hunger. Its strong contribution to health inequalities is disturbing, especially given the rights-based approach to food security enshrined in the South African Constitution. The state hasn’t been able to fulfil its constitutional role of ensuring that all South African residents have enough food to enjoy a dignified life. This was especially true during the period of the COVID-19 epidemic.

As we found in this study, hunger not only adversely affects people’s dignity; it also widens the health disparity between the rich and the poor. This is particularly worrying given the high prevalence of hunger during this epidemic. It has become absolutely necessary to protect the health of the poor in South Africa. That is why anti-hunger policies such as the National School Nutrition Programme are even more relevant now.

Read more: South Africa faces mass hunger if efforts to offset impact of COVID-19 are eased

The final factor contributing to widening health inequalities was income inequality. As earlier indicated, COVID-19 disproportionately affected the poor through a higher likelihood of them losing their jobs, among other things. A higher probability of job loss among already economically compromised individuals and households would not only exacerbate income inequality, but is likely to contribute to worsening health outcomes among the poor given their further limited ability to meet basic needs like food and medication.

Therefore, measures to save the livelihoods of the poor must be sustained during the crisis and beyond.

Way forward

Our paper underscores the fact that the poor bear a disproportionate burden of poor health and that income-related health inequalities seem to have gotten worse in the COVID-19 era.

We believe that this pandemic and the associated lockdown reinforced existing inequalities in South Africa. These were exacerbated by massive job cuts and a depressed labour market.

Policies that address race-based disadvantage – such as universal health coverage as well as anti-hunger measures are urgently needed to mitigate health disparities in the COVID-19 era and beyond.

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Effects of COVID-19 on the South African Economy

FORT MYERS, Florida — The COVID-19 pandemic has brought South Africa to the brink of a serious social and economic crisis. In a country where about 18% of the population already lives under the poverty line, the extent to which COVID-19 has exacerbated the poverty crisis is still unfolding. The pandemic prompted a national lockdown in April 2020 to control the spread. This had a detrimental effect on the South African economy, which was already in recession. Now, it is not just the COVID-19 pandemic rocking the country; a rising poverty epidemic also brings new challenges to overcome.

In April of 2020, the International Labour Organization predicted global job losses of about 305 million and an estimated 1.6 billion jobs at risk for the “most vulnerable in the labour market.”

According to Simone Schotte of the Chronic Poverty Advisory network, the shock of the pandemic will not be temporary. The lasting effects of the pandemic significantly weigh on the role of job acquisition in the South African economy, which Schotte argues is a main factor in upward mobility for struggling to escape poverty. Schotte continues, “The pandemic may not only have short-term income effects but also hamper people’s income-generating activities in the longer term, as households will turn to liquidating their small savings and selling off productive assets to cope during the lockdown period.”

Food Insecurity

There are three main ways that the pandemic can and will impact urban household food security . The first is the food supply chain which appears to be relatively stable at this time. Next is a decrease in food purchasing power and jobs. Essentially, the working class is the most affected by the lockdown. Last is food quality. In this case, there will most likely be an emphasis on non-perishable and processed foods with a long shelf life due to mobility restrictions. Food insecurity and nutritional inadequacy are tandemic factors on the rise, challenging the safety the South African diet, especially for vulnerable immigrant populations.

The shutdown of schools may have increased the number of meals parents at home would have had to make, when otherwise they would have relied on food programs. Meanwhile, many African immigrant women are domestic workers and may have received one or more meals each day at their clients’ homes. Now, these food sources aren’t accessible because of the health and economic crisis. Furthermore, securing employment, which was already an uphill battle for African immigrants before COVID-19, has become even more difficult.

Social Justice and Representation Politics

During the pandemic, impoverished urban African immigrants have become more vulnerable to xenophobic attacks and illegal arrests. Past studies show that immigrants contribute significantly to the nation’s economy despite only making up less than a tenth of the population. These studies show immigrants increasing income per capita and positively impacting public finances through their societal contributions in the South African economy.

In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there comes another crisis of representation in South Africa, likely not seen since the days of the Black Conciousness Movement of the 1970s. In this post-apartheid era, the interests of the upper and middle classes are largely represented within the political system. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of impoverished South Africans and African immigrants lack representation and are largely excluded. The lack of a strong political voice increased opposition to the state among unrepresented groups during the ongoing economic recession, and the pandemic only aggravated it further.

As income, employment rates, and equity wane under the force of a recession and the pandemic, the role of the state has become more preeminent. Social and business leaders, along with research studies, point to the importance of the South African government aggresively continuing to address barriers to economic improvement for all, regardless of financial status or country of origin.

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Working Paper The livelihood impacts of COVID-19 in urban South Africa

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This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy measures on livelihoods in urban South Africa. Using qualitative research methods, we analyse two rounds of semi-structured phone interviews, conducted between June and September 2020 in the township of Khayelitsha, Cape Town. We contextualise these by presenting a snapshot of the nationwide dynamics using quantitative panel data.

Our findings describe how the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the economic vulnerability which preceded the crisis. Survivalist livelihood strategies were undermined by the economic disruption to the informal sector, while the co-variate nature of the shock rendered social networks and informal insurance mechanisms ineffective, causing households to liquidate savings, default on insurance payments, and deepen their reliance on government grants. In addition, the impact of the pandemic on schooling may deepen existing inequalities and constrain future upward mobility.

Simone Schotte

Rocco Zizzamia

WIDER Working Paper 56/2021

https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/ 2021/994-5

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Covid-19 pandemic and the prospects of education in South Africa

Lesley le grange.

Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, Stellenbosch, 7602 South Africa

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused havoc in the world, radically changing our lives and raising new and old questions, both existential and educational. This pandemic has revealed the underbelly of South African society in general and its education system more specifically—it has laid bare the gross inequalities that are the legacies of apartheid and the consequences of neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on ideas articulated in the four introductory chapters of the International Handbook of Curriculum Research , edited by William Pinar in 2014, this article discusses Covid-19 and the prospects of education in South Africa. The article shows how understanding the wisdom of indigenous traditions along with the moral dimensions of education, race, and the new technologies of surveillance, neoliberalism, and education can provide a nuanced awareness of the nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. It then explores the implications of such insights for the field of curriculum studies and, where relevant, for the school curriculum. It concludes by showing how these broad themes intersect and gel around the notion of Ubuntu-currere.

The Covid-19 pandemic has radically changed human lives across the globe. The pandemic has manifested as a multifaceted crisis: health systems of many countries have been found wanting, resulting in deaths; the global economy has plummeted into recession; governments have curtailed freedoms of citizens; and communities have closed schools and higher education institutions during lockdown periods.

As a society, we often raise critical questions in times of crises—old questions and new ones. Asking the perennial existential question of how we ought to live is apposite at this time. And also, the enduring curriculum question, first raised by Herbert Spencer ( 1884 ): What knowledge is of most worth? Other education questions that we could invoke are: How ought we to teach/learn? What are the prospects for education during and after the Covid-19 pandemic? What is education for in troubled times? Is knowledge enough? We are witnessing emerging responses to these questions, and I shall touch on these questions in various ways in this article.

For the most recent International Handbook of Curriculum Research , Pinar ( 2014 ) commissioned four introductory chapters to challenge accounts on curriculum studies presented by authors from different nations. In the first chapter, Autio ( 2014 ) highlights the moral dimension of education and makes the point that it is education’s implicit morality that makes it educative. Autio’s use of “morality” is not meant in a didactive sense but is more akin to ethics: a commitment to engage, in an ongoing basis, with the worthiness of knowledge—that is, with the worthiness of what education programmes include and/or exclude. According to Pinar ( 2014 , p. 2), it is this sense of the moral that informs our “profession’s ethics, our commitment to study, and teach as we engage in academic research to understand curriculum”. Moreover, it also involves understanding curriculum as a complicated conversation that occurs among scholars of the field and between scholars and students.

In the second chapter, McCarthy, Bulut, and Patel ( 2014 ) discuss the reconfiguration of power that globalization accelerates, with a particular focus on race. They point out that race cannot be viewed in isolation but needs to be understood in contemporary times as structured through contradictory processes of globalisation, localisation, migration, and technologies of surveillance. The technologies of surveillance that the authors refer to are biometric technologies of information: face scanning; finger printing; DNA sampling; and so on. McCarthy et al. ( 2014 ) focus particularly on race, but their discussion can be extrapolated to other forms of discriminations that globalizations and new technologies hasten or reconfigure.

In the third chapter, Smith ( 2014 ) assesses the influence of neoliberalism on education, which includes, among other things, privatization, standardized assessments, and the use of technologies to make teaching/learning more efficient. He asks a pertinent question: how might we reimagine education given that neoliberalism brings into question the very assumptions that education is based on? Smith ( 2014 ) suggests that we need to analyze and interrogate neoliberalism on an ongoing basis in order to work through it, and that the inspiration for this ongoing examination could be drawn from the wisdom traditions, be they indigenous, religious, or philosophical.

In chapter 4, Wang ( 2014 ) focuses on nonviolence, which she explicates as an embodied sense of interconnectedness among humans, affirming compassion and a positive affiliation with others—in other words, our common humanity. She finds support for her argument from several philosophical, religious, and ethical traditions, including the African notion of Ubuntu, the Chinese notion of Tao, and indigenous peace-making traditions in North America.

In this article, I use the ideas articulated in these four chapters as a broad frame for advancing my thoughts. Accordingly, I divide the rest of the article into the following sections: the moral dimension of education; race, technologies of surveillance, and bio-informationism; neoliberalism and the prospects of education after the Covid-19 pandemic; and why we need Ubuntu-currere. Although my focus here is on the scholarly field of curriculum studies, I do at times explore implications for the school curriculum. When referring to the school curriculum, I make reference to the school subject that I know best, school biology.

The moral dimension of education

Education is by definition a moral enterprise, but the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to particular moral dilemmas for all people involved in education. Governments had to make decisions on school closings and also on when to reopen them. These are not easy decisions, and neither are the consequent choices that those impacted have had to make. In South Africa, schools are more than places where knowledge is exchanged between teacher and learner. For children from vulnerable communities, they are also places of safety and security: among other things, more than 9 million children receive 2 meals per day at school as part of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP). But during the lockdown period and level 4 of the government’s risk-adjusted approach, the NSNP was temporarily suspended. This left these children at risk of being underfed and/or malnourished during periods of school closures.

Gontsana ( 2020 ) reports that during the lockdown period the government of the Western Cape, one of the nine provinces in South Africa, made emergency funding available to provide meals to children in vulnerable communities. (The Western Cape is the only province not governed by the ruling party, the African National Congress [ANC]. It is governed by the nation’s official opposition, the Democratic Alliance [DA].) Thus, some schools opened their gates, arranged for learners to sit in open fields at a distance from one another, and gave them meals. However, the country’s largest teachers union, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), opposed this action. SADTU is affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which, together with the South African Communist Party, is in a tripartite alliance with the ANC. SADTU stated that the DA was going against the president’s plans to curb the spread of the virus, and although the union was concerned about the welfare of working-class learners and their families, it was opposed to learners being given meals on the school grounds because this would place them and their communities at increased risk. In this instance, one might argue that two entities with different political motives were using learners as a political football. The teacher in this situation is faced with a difficult moral dilemma. Assuming that the teacher is a member of SADTU and is also acutely aware that learners are not receiving adequate nutrition during the lockdown period, does the teacher support his/her union or does the teacher assist with feeding learners at the school?

At the time of writing this article, the South African minister of basic education announced a phased reopening of schools. Learners who returned to schools first were those at the exit points of primary and high schools—grades 7 and 12 learners, respectively. This happened in June 2020, which was the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the disease was predicted to peak in South Africa around August/September 2020. Thus, learners returned to schools at arguably the most vulnerable time for them in terms of the spread of the pandemic. The government has said that parents can decide themselves whether to allow their children to return to school or to do home schooling. This is a difficult moral decision for any parent to make. It is an even more difficult decision for poor and working-class families, who do not have the facilities and capacity to support their children to do home schooling and who may need to find childcare if they have to return to work themselves. Role players in education have only difficult choices, as these two instances illustrate. And decisions of this kind might best be left to parents, free of coercion. But what should the response of scholars who engage in the study of curriculum be at this time? What is their moral obligation during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Autio ( 2014 ) refers to the sense of “moral” as a “professional ethics” that relates to our commitment to study, teach, and engage in academic research aimed at understanding curriculum. During the Covid-19 pandemic, though we might be isolated and unable to engage with one another through traditional face-to-face means, our commitment to study, teach, and engage in academic research should not weaken. In fact, at this time we need a deeper commitment to this sense of ethics. This means that we should use new technologies to engage in complicated conversations about curriculum-related matters. As with many other conferences, the 2020 annual conference of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) was cancelled, but members have been encouraged to engage with one another through their special interest groups (SIGS), facilitated through use of technology. Members of the Curriculum Studies SIG, for example, have had complex conversations about the curriculum challenges facing South Africa during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. The SIG released a statement that invites a broader audience to take part in such ongoing discussions. These conversations have not been chitchats of the kind Aoki ( 2004 ) cautions against, nor have they been simple exchanges of information; instead, they have been robust, often involving disagreement, but always with a sense of mutual belonging and a commitment to the intellectual life of the field. I have been privileged to enjoy such exchanges in transnational spaces, in the way in which Pinar ( 2006 , p. 178) suggests that such spaces can be productive. He points out that, in transnational spaces, scholars of the field should distance themselves from their own national cultures and politics, and listen respectfully to others, thus creating “a global public space for dissension, debate, and on occasion solidarity”. At this time, we need such often-difficult conversations to intensify—we do not need social distancing but social solidarity in national and transnational spaces that new technologies and the commitment of curriculum scholars make possible. In other words, we need physical distancing, not social distancing.

Again, with reference to the moral dimension of education, Autio ( 2014 ) also refers to the need for conversations and debates on the worthiness of knowledge. That is, we need to ask critical questions about what knowledge is of most worth when it comes to the school curriculum during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Here, I turn to school biology as an example. Since its inception, a feature of school biology has been the debate on whether it is a “science of life” or a “science of living” (Le Grange 2008 ). Few would disagree that school biology has to include both of these dimensions, but the pendulum has swung back and forth over the years concerning where we should place the emphasis. From the last half of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, school biology has been largely characterized by the force-feeding of learners of a diet of “theory”, regurgitated on tests and examinations—content is often irrelevant to the needs of learners or of society. In other words, during that time schools have emphasized biology as a “science of life” (Le Grange 2008 ). Less than 2% of South African school leavers continue with careers in biology-related fields. Therefore, for the majority of learners who take biology at school, the current subject content is largely unrelated to their lives. This is true despite its potential relevance to many contemporary issues facing society; among them, human diseases, including virus-causing diseases such as Covid-19; human trafficking involving the sale of body parts; biodiversity loss; commodification of the genetic code; threats of biological warfare. Instead of traditional unifying themes such as “structure and function” or “evolution”, the curriculum could revolve around more relevant themes, such as sustainability, for example. Such themes also reinforce connections between many other school subjects. Here, the notion of sustainability does not have to do with policy goals but with cultivating a frame of mind that enables lifelong learning.

To continue with sustainability as an example, using it as a unifying theme in biology classrooms could prove to be productive. Instead of learners studying animals only in relation to themes such as structure and function, they could investigate what sustains an animal in fulfilling its ecological role, or occupying its niche, for example. It involves a way of getting learners to think about biology differently, to develop frames of mind focused on sustainability. Bonnett ( 2003 , p. 683) avers that a frame of mind is a “general mode of engagement with the world through which the world as a whole is revealed to us. … [I]t is more or less a conscious way of being in the world”. This requires a specific cognitive/conceptual outlook—but also involves our sensing of things and encapsulates the affective, moral, aesthetic, imaginative, and other receptions and responses that Bonnett ( 2003 , p. 684) refers to as “a mode of sensibility”. It is a mode of sensibility toward sustainability that might be cultivated in biology classrooms after the Covid-19 pandemic. Not as a quick fix but as a habit of mind that might develop over time as the world of biology is “revealed” to learners through a conscious focus on sustainability.

Race, technologies of surveillance, and bioinformationism

In their chapter, McCarthy et al. ( 2014 ) challenge scholars of curriculum to take seriously the reconfiguration of power as globalization quickens, and in particular how technologies of surveillance—such as biometric technologies, face scanning, finger printing, DNA sampling, etc.—can be used to advance or sustain racism. Subtle forms of racism might emerge as technologies of surveillance are used after the Covid-19 pandemic, because these technologies provide fertile ground for racism’s growth and consolidation. The pandemic will probably accelerate racism and other forms of discrimination, for several reasons—and there is already evidence of this. But the Covid-19 pandemic has also exposed the underbelly of racial inequalities in such countries as the US, the UK, and South Africa.

Devakumar, Shannon, Bhopal, and Abubakar ( 2020 ) point out that outbreaks such as Covid-19 create fear, and that fear is the key ingredient for racism and xenophobia to flourish. They go on to say that the pandemic has exposed the social and political fractures within communities, with racialized responses, that have affected marginalized groups disproportionately. Devakumar et al. ( 2020 ) note that we have already witnessed microaggressions or overt violence targeting Chinese people and barring them from establishments. Moreover, political leaders have exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to buttress racial discrimination by hardening border polices and conflating public health curtailments with anti-migrant rhetoric. For example, Italy’s Prime Minister cynically linked the Covid-19 pandemic to African asylum seekers, and the US President referred to SARS-CoV-2 as “the China virus” (Devakumar et al. 2020 ). These developments create fertile ground for racism, which is now also advanced through the technologies of surveillance that McCarthy et al. ( 2014 ) identify. The advances in technologies accelerated by Covid-19—and the powers that governments have to subject citizens, and particularly foreign nationals, to a range of tests under the guise of protecting public health interests—could be further aiding and abetting this situation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also laid bare racial inequalities in the US, UK, and South Africa. In the US, the death rate among African Americans is three times that of white Americans because of poor living conditions, poor nutrition, lack of access to healthcare facilities, and comorbidities (Begley 2020 ). Moreover, African Americans are also bearing the brunt of the devastating economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic (Rodgers 2020 ). We have also observed this disproportionate negative effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on black and Asian people in the UK. Andrews ( 2000 ) points out that this should not surprise us, and that it is a mistake to look at these racial differences through the lens of biology, because the issue is not a genetic but a social one. It is the consequence of sustained discrimination at systemic levels—economic, political, and social. In South Africa, this pandemic has revealed the extent of the country’s gross inequalities. Recent statistics show that 20 million South Africans do not have reliable access to running water in their homes (Ellis 2020 ); the government had to deliver thousands of water tanks to communities in a desperate attempt to slow the spread of the virus. And in the informal settlements where millions of black South Africans live, social distancing is a near impossibility. These vulnerable South African communities are also likely to bear the brunt of the economic impact of the pandemic.

McCarthy et al. ( 2014 ) have reminded us of the importance of bringing race—and its reconfiguration as globalization accelerates—into our curriculum conversations and actions. Race and racism—if they are currently blind spots or blank spots in our work—need to become key concerns in educational arenas. According to Wagner ( 1993 ), blank spots are what scientists know enough about to question but do not know how to answer, and blind spots are what they don’t care about or know enough about. To return for a moment to school biology: When it emphasizes a “science of life” approach, then race becomes a genetic topic and the conclusion is that there is only one human race, one species, Homo Sapiens . However, this approach can create a blind spot to race as a social construct and its sustained negative impact on people of colour across the globe. And it is this blind spot that has also made race science endure for more than a century and why we are seeing its growth in contemporary times (for more details, see Le Grange 2019a ). If school biology is to address issues related to race, then an emphasis on a “science of living” approach is more apposite than a “science of life” approach.

Lastly in this section, I shall turn briefly to the issue of bioinformationalism. Bioinformationalism relates to parallels between the propagation of fake news in social media echo chambers, and the evolution and transmission of infectious diseases (Peters, McLaren, and Jandrić 2020 ). Peters et al. ( 2020 ) point out that the Covid-19 pandemic is the first instance in which a biological virus has become dialectically intertwined with nonbiological viral information. What the authors are suggesting is that a biological virus and nonbiological viral information are working in tandem to accelerate the spread the virus. In other words, when fake news about the pandemic goes viral—such as “Covid-19 does not affect Africans” (a myth circulated across the African continent [Padayachee and Du Toit 2020 ])—it influences peoples’ behaviour in a manner that results in the spreading of the biological virus. And when the viral spread of fake news has racial connotations, such as linking the biological virus to African asylum seekers, then it also spreads racism. The coterminous nature of biological and nonbiological-information viruses adds to the complexity of issues related to the reconfiguration of race that globalization quickens and, consequently, to the complexity of curriculum scholars’ work. To return to school biology for the moment: the imbrication of biological viruses and the viral spread of nonbiological information could certainly be a topic for inclusion in school biology classroom conversations, and learners could be asked to generate as many similarities and differences between biological viruses and nonbiological viruses generated through ITCs as possible.

Neoliberalism and the prospects of education after the Covid-19 pandemic

In his chapter, Smith ( 2014 ) reminds curriculum scholars of the pervasiveness of neoliberalism in education and emphasizes the need to analyze neoliberalism and its effects on an ongoing basis. Neoliberalism can be traced back to seventeenth-century liberal perspectives, which became marginalized as a result of the rise of welfare-state liberalism (late nineteenth century) and Keynesian economics (twentieth century). The revival of neoliberalism in the late twentieth century is associated with the emergence of the new right in Europe and the US, often referred to as “Thatcherism” and “Reaganism” after two of its key proponents (Le Grange 2006 ). Although neoliberalism has different strands, all neoliberals embrace the following three basic principles: a commitment to individual liberty and a reduced state; a shift in policy and ideology against government intervention; and a belief that market forces should be allowed to be self-regulating (for a comprehensive discussion on the ascendancy of neoliberalism, see Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004 ).

Many Western governments floundered when Covid-19 resulted in a global pandemic because their health systems were unable to cope with the pandemic’s demands. Governments found themselves in a precarious position because of their underspending on healthcare—consequent on adopting neoliberal policies. Moreover, some scholars have gone as far as to link an increase in relatively unknown and highly infectious viruses to neoliberal capitalism. As McKinley ( 2020 ) writes:

[T]he increased occurrence of largely unknown and ever-more-virulent viruses is directly linked to the nature/character of land use and food production under the neo-liberal model of capitalism; to the contemporary dominance of an “industrial model” of agriculture that is umbilically tied to the never-ending search for maximum profits, whatever the human, social and/or environmental consequences.

Just as the Covid-19 pandemic as a public health crisis needs to be understood against the backdrop of neoliberalism, so, too, does the education crisis that has deepened during the pandemic in South Africa. In the late 1980s, the outgoing apartheid government of South Africa adopted neoliberal education policies and introduced new models for white schooling that involved the semi-privatization of these state schools under the guise of racially integrating them. The school model that survived into South Africa’s democratic dispensation was the model-C school; today, many elite and middle-class public schools in South Africa are commonly referred to as “former model-C schools”. At their inception, the model-C schools were fee-paying schools, and they were allowed to sell excess land, which enabled them to accumulate capital. These resources enabled these schools to appoint additional teachers to their staffs and, by doing so, improve the quality of education provided. After 1994, South Africa’s democratically elected government continued the neoliberal trend and maintained what has become a grossly unequal public school system. The government’s attempts to make the schools in economically poor communities non–fee paying—by dividing them into different quintiles—have done little to arrest the inequalities that characterize the South African schooling landscape (see Le Grange, Reddy, and Beets 2012 ).

When South Africa went into lockdown during the pandemic and closed its schools, the unequal education system in South Africa was exposed even further. Learners in private schools as well as in affluent and middle-class public schools migrated relatively easily to emergency remote learning, because these learners had access to devices and connectivity, as well as support from teachers and parents. Access to any form of online learning for the majority of school learners remains a pipedream; thus, the Covid-19 pandemic has likewise laid bare the severity of the digital divide in South Africa (Davids 2020 ). Moreover, when schools reopen as the country moves to lower levels of its risk-adjusted approach, learners who attend schools in economically poor communities will be at greater health risk. Such schools lack basic sanitation and water infrastructure; moreover, their inferior facilities will make physical distancing a challenge. Although learners in South Africa’s bimodal schooling system have the same explicit curriculum, the curriculum-as-lived by the two sets of learners is radically different. The Covid-19 pandemic will further reduce the life chances of a learner from a school in an economically poor community relative to those of a learner in a private or affluent public school.

Additionally, as affluent and middle-class schools pivot toward online learning and governments invest in technology infrastructure to make online learning more widely available after the Covid-19 pandemic, we must be aware of the dangers regarding these developments in the context of neoliberal capitalism. It is my contention that we should view new technologies (and in the context of education, online teaching/learning) dialectically. In other words, we need to recognize both their productive potential to advance the goals of social justice and the dangers of their consolidating inequities. In the context of neoliberal capitalism, not only will the digital divide widen, as noted, but also the migration to online learning could result in greater privatization of schooling as for-profit intermediaries become involved in developing online programmes/courses. This is because public schools do not have the capacity to develop such programmes or courses—platform pedagogy morphs into platform capitalism (for a more detailed discussion on such developments, see Hall 2016 ; Le Grange 2020 ). In this context, instrumentalist approaches to education would thrive and policy makers would cement standardized tests to improve efficiencies. Performativity regimes—including surveillance of both teachers and learners—are likely to increase.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that communities in South Africa radically reconfigure and resource their schools. Such a reconfiguration needs to make those who inhabit schools (learners and teachers) the central concern, and to open up the pathways for the becoming of their lives (in relationship with one another). It is with this in mind that I turn to a discussion of the notion of Ubuntu-currere.

Why we need Ubuntu-currere

The Covid-19 pandemic will probably not be the last global crisis facing humanity in the twenty-first century. If another virulent virus is not the cause of such crisis, then the cause could be an environmental catastrophe—that is, if humanity continues on its unsustainable course and neoliberal capitalism continues to thrive. It is sobering to note that global crises have not led to the weakening of neoliberal capitalism, as evident in the case of the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Hall ( 2016 ) points out that it was not surprising that Uber and Airbnb had their genesis during that financial crisis, in the years 2008 and 2009, respectively. These for-profit, “sharing”-economy, platform-based companies have taken neoliberalism to an ideal form. Customers benefit from the services offered, but, for the on-demand worker in these industries, rights and benefits have become eroded as these businesses escape state regulation (see Hall 2016 ; Le Grange 2020 ). And so, there is a danger that, in the wake of the current pandemic, we might see greater privatization of several sectors, including healthcare and education.

Smith ( 2014 ), in his chapter, averred that, to get beyond neoliberalism, we need to analyze it on an ongoing basis. He goes on to say that in our critical engagement with neoliberalism we might find inspiration in wisdom traditions, be they indigenous, religious, or philosophical. It is this part of Smith’s chapter that connects to Wang’s ( 2014 )—the fourth introductory chapter in Pinar’s ( 2014 ) edited handbook—where she promotes nonviolence through the invocation of indigenous and peace-making traditions such as the African notion of Ubuntu and the Chinese notion of Tao. Given the violence perpetrated against humans (particularly those on the margins of societies) that the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare, we could find inspiration from the traditions that Wang ( 2014 ) refers to. Therefore, following on from Smith ( 2014 ) and Wang ( 2014 ), I propose that the notion of Ubuntu-currere might provide the inspiration and motive force for ridding ourselves of the shackles of neoliberal capitalism and its effects on education.

I invoked the idea of Ubuntu-currere in a keynote address at the fifth triennial conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) (Le Grange 2015 ). The idea brings together insights from the African value of Ubuntu and William Pinar’s ( 1975 ) autobiographical method currere , which was extended by Wallin ( 2010 ). Ubuntu, derived from aphorisms in the Nguni languages of southern Africa, means that our being and becoming is dependent on others. In contrast to Descartes’s cogito ergo sum , “I think, therefore I am”, Ubuntu means “because we are, therefore I am”. Some have misconstrued the meaning of Ubuntu, arguing that it is, by definition, speciesist. However, what we need to understand is that relationality between humans (Ubuntu) is emblematic of the relatedness of all things in the cosmos. I point out that Ubuntu is the concrete expression of the Shona concept Ukama, which mean relatedness of all things in the cosmos (Le Grange 2012 ). In other words, Ubuntu is a microcosm of Ukama. Moreover, Ramose ( 2009 ) has argued that Ubuntu is antihumanist and involves the ongoing unfolding of the human in relationship with the other—that the human being is in-becoming.

Forty-five years ago, Pinar ( 1975 ) first invoked the etymological root of “curriculum”: the Latin currere , “to run the course”. In doing so, he refocused curriculum on the significance of individual experience, “whatever the course content or alignment with society or the economy” (Pinar 2011 , p. xii). Currere privileges the individual and Pinar ( 2011 , p. 2) argues that it is a complicated concept, because each of us is different in our genetic makeup, our upbringings, our families, and, more broadly, our race, gender, class, and so on. Put simply, currere shifts the attention away from the concept of a predetermined course to run, to a focus on how the course is run by each individual, given each one’s unique makeup, context, hopes, aspirations, and interactions “with other human beings and the more-than-human world” (Le Grange 2019b , pp. 221–22). In other words, each person has her or his own life story, and the understanding of one’s own story through academic study is at the heart of curriculum. Pinar ( 1975 ) develops currere as an autobiographical method with four steps or moments—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical—that depict both temporal and reflective moments for autobiographical research of educational experience.

Both Ubuntu and currere affirm the importance of human experience—the being and becoming human—and the unfolding of the human as the world is revealed to it. But Le Grange ( 2015 , 2019b ) brings the two notions together to shift the emphasis from the individual to a subject that is ecological—a subject that is embodied, embedded, and enacted. I invigorated lines of connections between emerging (post)human theories to create a new concept: Ubuntu-currere. I wrote:

Ubuntu-currere shifts our registers of reference away from the individual human being to an assemblage of human-human-nature. In other words, subjectivity is ecological. Moreover, the subject is always in becoming and the becoming of a pedagogical life is relational—the subject becomes in relation to other humans and the more-than-human-world. The notion in-becoming ensures that the human cannot be defined nor have fixity and therefore Ubuntu-currere is anti-humanist. Put differently, Ubuntu-currere negates the construction of a molar identity that is a screen against which anything different is othered in a negative sense. Ubuntu-currere has resonance with new materialist post-human theory in that it embraces an ontology of immanence—that there is a material immanent plane that connects everything in the cosmos and from which all actualised forms unfold/become. Ubuntu-currere opens up multiple coursings for developing post-human sensibilities driven by the positive power of potentia that connects, expresses desire and sustains life. … But, it also makes possible conversations with the more-than-human so that we can listen to the rhythm and heartbeat of the earth—so that our conversations do not happen on the earth but are bent by the earth. (Le Grange 2019b , pp. 221–222; italics in original)

Ubuntu-currere affirms the importance of caring for other humans beings—“humanness” does not mean humanism and is antithetical to it. The subject of education informed by Ubuntu-currere is not egoistic and holds no ontological privilege, but is placed on an immanent plane with all living beings. The actions (ethics) of this subject in the world are to release the power that is within—in contrast to the power that imposes or acts upon the other. This power of potentia is within all life and connects all modes of life. It is this same power that we see when humans perform generous acts of caring for others during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they unselfishly give up their lives to save or feed another. This power is counter to the negative power of postestas that imposes, that engages in othering, that colonizes, that controls, etc. If we are to have a different post-Covid-19 world, then its actualization depends on invigorating potentia . Education informed by Ubuntu-currere involves supporting learners to release potentia so that actions in the world are about enhancing life.

Concluding thoughts

The ideas advanced in the four introductory chapters of the International Handbook of Curriculum Research that frame this article are connected to one another and crystalize in the notion of Ubuntu-currere. The moral dimension of education speaks to our sense of belonging to something bigger than our individual selves and the need for our ongoing commitment to engage in complicated conversations with one another, and more so in troubled times. And in such conversations, we should understand and investigate how the ongoing discriminations of all kinds that continue to plague us are amplified and accelerated. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare how those on the margins of society bear the brunt of the pandemic—and that the underlying cause of much of this reality of inequality is the dominance of neoliberal capitalism. If we are to avoid the damaging effects of crises such as the current one, then we need perform currere to free ourselves from the fetters of neoliberal capitalism. And if we are to live in harmony with one another and the more/other-than-human world, then we need to fuse currere with Ubuntu. Ubuntu-currere makes possible an education that is a life-long affair of experimentation with the real—experimentation constrained only by life itself. Put differently, our experimentation with life should be curtailed only when we hurt other humans or the more/other-than-human world.

is Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is also Vice-President of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK), a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and rated as an internationally acclaimed researcher by the National Research Foundation in South Africa. He has published more than 200 articles and serves on editorial boards of nine peer-reviewed journals. He has delivered more than 170 academic presentations and is recipient of several academic awards and prizes; the most recent is the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) Honours Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to Educational Research in South Africa.

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