Of pandemics, penury and philanthropy in South Africa: lessons from Islamic humanism.
| Autor | Kawadza, Herbert |
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Introduction
COVID-19 plunged millions into poverty as countries went into lockdown, jobs dried up and people living in cramped, unsanitary housing struggled to keep the virus at bay[...]. Ending extreme poverty is not impossible. Hypothetically, it would take $100bn to make everyone on Earth have more than $1.90 a day. Aid and private philanthropy could cover that sum twice over, with money to spare. (The Economist, 2021, "Poverty and the pandemic", p. 87)
Throughout history, pandemics have had uncanny ways of exposing not only the weak partnership between states and communities but also the frailties of civil society's norms and structures (Gomez & Harris, 2016; Schwartz, 2014). Much as they tend to spawn positive effects, such as scientific advancement, new technologies and infrastructures (Rosenberg, 1992), pandemics also expose the dark side of humanity, particularly the dislocated and disrupted personal relationships. More specifically, epidemics in the mould of the COVID-19 entrench of the social-economic discrimination of the vulnerable (Snowden, 2019; Honigsbaum, 2019; LePen, 2020), hence shoving them below the poverty line (Crosby, 1989). Such a gloomy depiction of the aftereffects of pandemics has recently been witnessed in South Africa.
In this article, I argue that this pandemic should not go to waste. Rather, it should be noted for enabling a reflection on the interactions between market economies and humanity. In the South African context, the pandemic has been an expose on society's loss of humanity and the disregard of the crucial intersection between social and economic ties. Put differently, the pandemic and the resultant pandemic-related responses such as lockdowns have "revealed a very sad fault line in our society that reveals how grinding poverty, inequality and unemployment is tearing the fabric of our communities apart" as well as "the gross inequalities in our society, which we either chose to ignore or had become nonchalant about...] We have come to realise that a society built on inequality, a society where people live like kings - and like paupers - is not sustainable in the longer run."
By contrast, and as will be discussed below, arguably, Islamic culture seems to have provided mechanisms that have shielded the vulnerable from the harsh impact of the pandemic. Why they fared better is partly attributable to the operation of cultural ethos. In this article, I add to the line of welfare scholarship by examining how cultural ethos of Islam can provide a platform for the re-examination of the potential influence of cultural norms on philanthropy in the South African context. This article maintains that fundamental lessons can be drawn from guiding principles of Islamic cultural values of altruism. It is not the clamour for the transplantation of Islamic norms; rather, it is inspired by the rationales that underlie such norms. It is stimulated by the reality that the breakdown of societal cohesion has not helped the plight of the vulnerable and that Islamic moral conscious philanthropy provides crucial lessons from which South Africa's social assistance policy can be examined. This article reiterates that when Islamic ethos is considered, the results could be cultural values that are tied to charity, the minimisation of opportunism and an enhanced social conscience, particularly to the plight of the vulnerable.
This article is organised around five themes. Section 2 sets the scene by giving a summary on how Islamic societies have utilised their cultural norms to protect the vulnerable in society, and Section 3 summarises how the poor have been impacted by the pandemic in the South Africa. This is followed by a discussion of the role of culture in shaping human relations in Section 4. It offers a theoretical discussion of how certain cultural tenets could assuage human anguish amid challenging market forces. Section 5 discusses how Islamic culture has arguably managed to entrench an environment, which permeates a social conscience which engenders charity. Section 6 concludes.
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A primer on Islamic response to the pandemic
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has spawned a relatively large corpus of diverse scholarly output, which has sought to shape public and individual responses not only to the disease but to how believers should treat the poor. Most of these writings revisit the role of Islam as constitutive elements or medium of ameliorating the position of the vulnerable during the pandemic. For instance, Piwko (2021) emphasises how the pandemic has reinforced cultural norms aimed at the fulfilment of community duties towards the poor and the brotherhood. Compliance with COVID-19 contained measures, such as travel restrictions, has been eased by linking the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad who exhorted believers to exercise hygiene and minimisation of travelling or visiting each other during the plague and the avoidance of the sick.
Compliance with such edicts and social and religious orders resulted in inter alia, the suspension of religious practices, such as congregational prayers at mosques. Similarly, others demonstrate how the pandemic has re-awakened religiosity and robust adherence to the religious practices of Islam. In particular, questions have been raised as to the role of obligatory alms (zakat) and other forms of charities, and how these can be used in assisting those who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Scholars have pointed out how the religious leaders have pronounced fatwas allowing the payment of the annual obligatory alms in advance, ahead the specified or regular times marked by the passing of a full lunar year. These measures are aimed at motivating those with resources to provide immediate and urgent assistance to members of society who are in need.
Furthermore, fatwas on the coronavirus have buoyed philanthropic causes, which include those providing resources to entities, such as hospitals and other entities that provide necessary care especially to vulnerable members of the society (Morales & Renomeron, 2021). In an environment where social gathering has been discouraged, Muslims came up with innovative strategies of dispensing aid to the poor, particularly during Ramadan. These are best exemplified by drive-thru iftars and coronavirus task forces (Mukit, 2021).
Similarly, scholars have documented how Islamic social finance through philanthropic giving, such as zakat and waqf, have had an effect of not only minimising the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society by, for instance, increasing the well-being of the less privileged but also the efforts to rebuild Islamic economies (AbdulKareem, Mahmud, & Hassan, 2021). Through Waqf or "religious endowment", devout or charitable donation, or social development, for instance, the maintenance and provision of mosques, Muslims have benefited from a system that supports the eradication of poverty during the pandemic (Ainol-Basirah & Siti-Nabiha, 2020). Such strategies steeped in Islamic philanthropy no doubt proved to be effective not only as supplements to government measures in mitigating the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the people and society at large but also provided instructive approaches in enhancing the safety and dignity of the human being during the pandemic.
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The South African experience
The South African experience exemplifies the above outlook. The lack of enduring values of philanthropy and the inadequacies of government's strategies means that the poor and vulnerable have borne the sharp end of the pandemic. The sledgehammer response by the South African government - a lockdown enforced and characterised by routine callousness by the army and police (Retief, Nicolson, & Haffajee, 2020; Arnold, 2020), has worsened vulnerability by cutting them off from their sources of livelihood, such as garbage collection and street begging. Without access to social funding, the lockdown has compelled the poor to make tough choices between submitting to the containment mechanisms of the lockdown and going hungry or breaching them by going out in search of food and being punished for that (Polity, 2021).
More tellingly, "millions face hunger as lockdown crimps incomes and leaves families increasingly exposed. They include 1 million domestic workers, nearly 90 000 waste pickers, 3.5 million elderly and 12 million children (Sunday Times, 2020a)." It would therefore not be cynical or irresponsible to state that the responses to the pandemic have arguably been as horrendous as the pandemic itself.
Although the South African government promulgated a multi-billion rand relief package and emergency fiscal stimulus packs aimed at cushioning the citizenry and businesses (SA Government News, 2020), front page headlines of corruption in the...
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