Coronavirus: Whites blamed as African poor pay price

One of the world’s strictest lockdowns to fight coronavirus has exposed South Africa’s inequalities.

A man on his balcony during the lockdown in Cape Town. Picture: AP

One of the world’s strictest lockdowns to fight coronavirus had exposed South Africa’s inequalities even before the country recorded its first deaths.

The order for 57 million people to stay at home has confined million­s to cramped townships. Practising social distancing or safe hygiene is near impossible. Barely half the population have running water or a lavatory in their homes.

“How are we supposed to stay in our shacks and not leave for days?” Thandasizwe Jonas asked from the Ramaphosa township near Johannesburg.

He is all too aware that this unseen­ threat, which has ended livelihoods overnight, arrived on an international flight. While the wealthy minority can hoard food, the majority are panicking.

“I have never seen the inside of a plane, but I must suffer because people are travelling,” he said.

The virus in Africa has spread fastest in countries such as South Africa, which have more travel connections with the world. As the virus has taken hold in some of the poorest areas of almost all 54 African­ countries, it has started to expose racial resentment.

Reports of pale-skinned people being spat at, stoned and chased have led many expats and foreign workers to flee, or at least send their families home.

French-German citizen Ulrike Muller has lived and worked in Africa­ for many years but fear pressed her to leave landlocked West African nation Burkina Faso. “Many believe (whites) brought the virus. It’s not a baseless accus­a­tion,” the pregnant mother of two told a German TV station.

In footage shot in Johan­nes­burg, locals could be heard shouting “Corona! Corona!” as they battered the side of a tour bus full of Germans. A newspaper in Senegal questioned whether France was out to “coronise” its former colony after its first patients, two French people, tested positive. Video of a suburb of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, showed an Asian couple being mobbed.

The US embassy in Ethiopia has reported a rise in assaults on foreigners. Ethiopia has closed churches in Addis Ababa and elsewhere but the faithful have ­responded by gathering outside.

Africa has passed 10,000 cases, with 500 dead.

Sixty-six people, most of them staff at one Durban hospital, had tested positive, South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday as the national total of cases jumped to 1749. South Africa has reported 13 deaths so far.

Data from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation predicts ­millions of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is one doctor for every 5000 people, compared with one for every 300 in Europe.

The average US hospital has more intensive care beds than most African countries. Kenya has only 130.

In Zimbabwe, which is under lockdown, Defence Minister Oppah Muchinguri said the devas­tation wrought by the pandemic in the West was “the work of God punishing countries who imposed­ sanctions on us”.

President John Magufuli of Tanzania will not shut churches. “That’s where there is true healing,” he said.

On Sunday the virus reached its 51st African country, South Sudan, which has four ventilators for a population of 11 million.

the times