With South Africa moving to a slightly eased lockdown phase, the question that confronts us all is who, after the doors are opened and the gates are unlocked, will be walking out of those doors and gates?
Who have we become? After the food boxes are sent to hungry people, and the online coronavirus-influenced sermons have stopped, who have we become?
Who will be sitting next to me in the taxi? Who will run to catch the train with me? Who will we have become?
I hope we will have seen that none of us can be so arrogant to claim anything - no glory, and no “better-
than-otherness”. I hope we emerge from our locked doors and gates and fences as deeply humble servants of our country. Servants of human rights and justice. Servants of kindness and humility.
I hope that we have seen the foolishness of our arrogance and of thinking that we are better than others. I hope we give up our self-importance. I hope we are seen more among the poor and the broken than what we are seen in groups chatting about them.
I hope that we will look at small businesses and young entrepreneurs as people providing jobs to over 2 million South Africans, many of those employees being our parents and our young children entering the labour market.
I hope that we have seen the importance of our refuse collectors. That we have seen the invaluable role teachers play in society. The absolute necessity of having more nurses. The critical importance of a hospital bed over a hotel bed. How foolish we were to think that we would never be at risk. How suddenly a face mask and hand sanitiser became more valuable than our suits and oversized watches.
I hope that at your next board meeting you decide to write a note to the refuse-collectors in our cities to thank them.
I hope you give a nurse, who is standing at a bus stop at 6am to start her 7am shift, a ride to work. I hope we all pay teachers and nurses and refuse-collectors a lot more money after this lockdown.
I hope that boxing food to share with others becomes a regular part of life. I hope that strangers won’t know what we do or what books we published or what countries we had visited. I trust that they will only know us as ones who care, love, give.
I hope that the obsession with influencers decreases and that we get used to telling stories of ordinary people, that we excel at being box packers and bin cleaners and food distributors and not just loud voices in Zoom meetings.
I pray that we won’t ever turn people away from being in important spaces, because “they’re not properly dressed” or “they don’t “smell good”. Just remember: that was you during lockdown.
I hope that we emerge from lockdown as people no longer obsessed with party political affiliations as much as we are with justice, education, health and human rights.
I hope that we will never treat homeless people the way we did during the lockdown. I pray that we will never again use the plight of others to advance our own brand of politics, religion or power.
To those who made lots of money during this crisis, I hope it bothers you so much until you give it back to the very people you overcharged.
To those who only prayed - but did not speak up for justice and human rights and the vulnerable: you let us down.
To those who thought that education was all on equal ground in South Africa, I hope you have seen the enormous levels of inequality in education between suburban schools, and its township counterparts. I hope you dedicate your life to undoing this injustice.
When we walk out of lockdown, who have we become?
* Lorenzo A Davids is chief executive of the Community Chest.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.