By Anelia Heese
366 days. 11 March 2021. Here we are today after one full (leap) year. We are privileged to have a roof over our heads, even though it’s the same roof day after day and even though that roof is thousands of miles from home. Perhaps you once believed that South Africa no longer has a place for you, but maybe this pandemic made you realise that it’s still your only home.
This leap year has frightened many of us. Maybe you were startled when you could not fly home. Perhaps you have become afraid of the undeniable longing that settled permanently inside you. Maybe this year you took the opportunity to take inventory. The skyscrapers and the alien eucalyptus over the horizon no longer are beautiful when we are not allowed to go home. It is a longing that can only be quenched by the open horizons under the African sun.
Maybe it’s in our blood: this longing for an open, untouched horizon when the anxiety does not want to leave us. As with our Afrikaner ancestors, there was a cost to those untouched horizons. We had to sacrifice, but we were also exploited.
Experts and knowledgeable people predicted pandemics. We have been warned that the exploitation of nature and the inequality between those who have food and those who suffer from hunger will lead to a crisis. This pandemic teaches us that if we don’t protect the defenceless, the walls we build around us will no longer protect us.
We violate the environment, yet we want to end this pandemic with a natural image. The English term “herd immunity” refers to the shelter created when enough people get well after coming into contact with an infectious virus. The cohesive unit of immunity then creates further protection for the defenceless who may perish from the virus.
We can’t always protect the defenceless, but we can address the injustice of inequality with compassionate deeds. This is the only way we can give each other and the vulnerable among us a better chance to survive.
This pandemic is an expensive lesson on exploitation. Before we can fix it, we must wait. The lesson on exploitation is a lesson we as Afrikaners know all too well. The price we pay for it is to wait in the midst of a strange flock blaring in a language we don’t know.
This piece of writing originally appeared on Herklink’s homepage.
More about Herklink
Resonance: Sounding memories
Anelia’s grandfather died in May 2020 in the Western Cape. In June, her grandmother wrote on WhatsApp: “I couldn’t even greet my lifelong friend … I could only press my elbow against his for the last time at the hospital entrance. He cried out to me in his last moments and I couldn’t be there.”
Following this call for help, Anelia and Andri developed a “virtual memorial service”. Contributions came from all over the globe: his daughter and grandchildren in Australia, family all over South Africa, the Dutch Reformed congregation in his beloved hometown. In this special way, everyone gathered one Sunday at 10:30 – each in their own lounge – to say goodbye. A meagre replacement, but it could still offer comfort in those tragic circumstances. So, it became our calling to comfort others in the same way.
