PANDEMICS COME and pandemics go. History is replete with instances of global and regional diseases that have respected neither epochs nor national frontiers. Pandemics have changed the course of history, wreaking havoc with human lives. In times of helplessness and hopelessness, pandemics have even been ascribed as being acts of the almighty extracting vengeance and imposing punishment on wayward souls.

History will recall, in the dark ages, the eruption of bubonic plague (the black death), that led to one-third of the world’s population being decimated. Cholera, spread through faeces-laced water and food, killed millions in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Ebola, SARS and now COVID-19 continue to prey upon humanity. But these cataclysmic diseases ebb and flow, lurking undetected, then attacking mercilessly.

“The pandemic of poverty has been nourished and nurtured by political neglect”

One pandemic has consistently dwelt with, and has been the scourge of humanity throughout history; the pandemic of poverty, a state defined by the United Nations as a “denial of choices and opportunities and a violation of human dignity”. Fully 80 per cent of the world’s population survives on less than 10 dollars per day, an amount insufficient to garner the basics of food, water, clothing, and shelter.

Unlike the aforementioned historical instances of pandemics, the syndrome of poverty does not ebb and flow but remains a fixture in the chronicles of human experience. It has overwhelmed millions throughout time, and continues to destroy man, woman, and child in every corner of the globe, sparing no nationality, religion, or societal construct. Palliative measures have been tried but no cure has been found workable. 

Uncompromising

Poverty is uncompromising in its resistance to amelioration or eradication. Its poisonous enzyme embedded in the corpus of affluent as well as poverty-stricken nations, climates, and governments, remains a challenge for those wanting to seek a cure. 

Why is there no sure cure? Why is there no vaccine that can prevent this malady, no injectable that can cure this affliction. The pandemic of poverty has been nourished and nurtured by political neglect, economic greed, religious fervour, and societal prejudices. The great wealth of Africa has been stolen by the colonial masters and sadly, by African political leaders for the most part. This is just one of a multitude of causative factors.

All these scourges, working independently or in unison, have, throughout history and even today, rendered modalities for success an impossible dream.

The Marxist model was meant to correct economic imbalances and restore dignity and economic well-being to the “unwashed masses”. But this experiment eventually faded into obscurity, overcome by political infighting, broken promises, and the lure of the lifestyle of Western nations.

Ironically, the survivors today of this experiment, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba display the full-blown symptoms of poverty, a disease the experiment was designed to eradicate. Communist China has exploited capitalist practices to partially overcome the innate poverty of its people. 

World food-aid programmes, and financial assistance from NGO’s give fleeting relief at best. Political corruption and donor apathy dismantle any semblance of improvement to the way of life of so-called beneficiary countries. Mankind, sadly, has no answer to this malady and is unlikely to find a cure because of man’s inhumanity to man.