The outbreak of Covid-19 has disrupted and negatively impacted the economy, jobs, income, and livelihoods in unprecedented manners.
The impact is occurring in the context of existing social challenges such as extreme and deepening poverty, impact of climate change on livelihoods, food insecurity, high levels of social and income inequalities, and lack of access to any form of social protection for the majority of the people.
Against this background, it is opportune for citizens and governments to discern whether humanity is learning lessons from the Covid-19 experiences.
One of the lessons we ought to learn, is the need to build resilient, innovative, flexible, and adaptive institutions, systems, and processes capable of responding promptly and effectively.
Another lesson is supposed to be rethinking, reimagining, and creating new global and national ethical human values and principles.
History has taught over the years that humanity seems to have short memories and fail in most instances to learn.
We tend to resort to business as usual, and to our comfort zones after disastrous events.
The preamble to the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, an agency established after the Second World War, asserts that the ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of humankind of that suspicion and mistrust between peoples of the world through which their differences have all often broken into war.
Despite this warning in the 1940s already, prejudice, mistrust and discrimination persist in the world today.
The Unesco constitution further states that a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace, which could secure lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world.
Peace must, therefore, be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of humankind.
A reminder from the coronavirus is that we belong to one human family, and that no single state or individual is capable of effectively addressing global challenges and concerns.
Our internalised humanness ought to help humanity to have feelings about one another, to support each other, and to act in solidarity, and in support of especially the needy and most vulnerable in society.
In the case of Namibia, we have read about, and have seen positive stories of unemployed and ordinary citizens collecting financial and other resources to support those in most need.
As a lesson from Covid-19, humanity ought to enhance the values of humanness, interdependency, solidarity, and promoting the common good above individual interests and greedy.
Covid-19 has also reminded us about the value of all work and workers. This includes professions that governments seem to have been neglecting.
Suddenly, and as a result of the virus, society including governments have begun to value the work of health professionals, media professionals, law enforcement officers, and educators, amongst others.
The question is whether this appreciation would result in commensurate improved conditions of service and work or would remain symbolic.
Another preoccupation ought to be serious planning series focusing on the impact of the pandemic on income, livelihoods, and the economy, and the need for a national and comprehensive livelihood and economic recovery plan.
The Namibia Statistics Agency has reported that the domestic economy has contracted by 11% during the second quarter of 2020.
The contraction is across the entire sectors of the economy. A critical focus, therefore, ought to be on restarting and rebuilding the economy and livelihoods.
First Capital Namibia in their report: Namibia economic transformation journey, 1990 - 2020 has analysed the structure and performance of the Namibian economy and has made recommendations about structural economic transformation.
The Basic Income Grant (Big) Coalition has also provided options in addressing income inequalities and social transformation.
Covid-19 despite the devastating effect, offers an opportunity for Namibians to rethink, and through a genuine, evidence-based, and inclusive participatory process, develop a sector prioritized short, medium, and long-term economic and social recovery plan.
The Mid -Term Budget Review in October could have been the starting point in introducing different budgeting scenarios and forecasts, and reallocating resources through a thought process, and according to real human needs.
Another matter of concern is the extent to which policy makers and the bureaucracy have internalised the impact of Covid-19, and therefore, the need for urgency, thinking beyond the box, and flexibility in all government operations.
Someone with an outsider perspective gets the impression that Covid-19 has not brought about the required anticipation, responsiveness, and coordination measures in government and other institutions.
The citizenry by now for example, expects a public available cost-benefit analysis document demonstrating whether curtailing expenditure such as freezing filling of posts, working remotely, minimising subsistence and travel expenses, and other measurers during lockdown, have perhaps yielded savings for reallocation.
In a nutshell, Namibia needs to modernise policies, practices, and methods of work in all our institutions to become organisations of the future.