Our Worst Foe Is Civilization

In November of 1871, the then Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, contracted typhoid fever, a deadly disease which at the time was blamed on sewer gas, a noxious vapor which arose out of the modern conveniences that were a feature of middle- and upper-class homes. Water closets had been heralded by sanitary science as the safest and most efficient means for disposal and, despite the foul smell they were associated with, having one was still considered a privilege. “The pestilence that walketh in darkness” the Times called it, declaring that “our worst foe is Civilization”.

Today the world is stalked by another pestilence, one that does not spare the wealthy and has already afflicted the current Prince of Wales. In the words of the Times 150 years ago, "it is a more terrible, more constant, and far more insidious danger which now occupies the foreground in public anxiety”. Much of the concern is driven by the fact that Covid-19 is not just a disease of the poor. As Prof Alex Broadbent of the University of Johannesburg asks: “Would we care about the increased risk of fatal pneumonia that Covid-19 might cause in Africa, if it did not also greatly increase the risk of fatal pneumonia for prime ministers, business people and university professors, including those in countries where infectious disease and its terrors are supposed to be of historical interest only”? As sewer gas did, coronavirus has “shifted the focus away from the fever dens of the poor to the bedchambers of princes and, more frequently, "ordinary middle-class houses" as sites of disease and death”.

The pandemic is devastating more than just health systems. It is also shattering the illusion of safety engendered by systems which for centuries have concentrated global resources in a few societies, families and individuals while leaving many across the globe without access to basic life-sustaining necessities. And once again, the blame is being laid at the door of “Civilization”, this time in the form of globalization. "It's globalization that has allowed covid 19 to spread around the world at such incredible speed" declares Deutsche Welle, decrying how reliant the West has become on cheap medicines and products from China and India. illustrating just how dependent the world has become on just one economy, China. declares John Gray.

The coronavirus has hugely increased, at least in the short term, the costs of global inequality and exploitation. The question is whether “civilization” will win out as it eventually did in London, where following the Prince's recovery, sanitary reform became a national priority. Will the global pandemic pave the way for reform of the global system to make it more equitable or is John Gray right when he declares in the New Statesman that “the era of peak globalisation is over”?

Undoubtedly, continuing along the same path would entail the powerful accepting vulnerability as the price of inequality. After all, while the poor are paying a steep price for a disease that the wealthy are primarily responsible for spreading, Max Fisher and Emma Bubola note in their piece for the New York Times, that “in an epidemic, poverty and inequality can exacerbate rates of transmission and mortality for everyone”. Therefore in the absence of a vaccine (and a viable one is reckoned to be 12-18 months away), as long as the poor continue to get sick, so will the rich and powerful. How those at the top of the global food chain, be they the citizens of the global North or elites in the global South, act to reduce that vulnerability will depend on the extent to which they are willing to share the wealth along with the diseases.

On the other hand, while it is true that economic globalization has been taking a pummeling of late, a significant retreat as Gray prophesies seems unlikely. Already, there is talk of reopening economies and resuming normal life. Yet without globalization and the accompanying “worldwide production and long supply chains”, the new normal would be an expensive one. It is questionable whether countries like the US and Germany could afford to produce goods and medicines at the cost that they import them from countries like China and India. Or whether their citizens would be willing to forgo access to cheap iPhones to protect the one-percenters.

The other option open to the rich and powerful to reduce their vulnerability is to reform the global systems rather than retreat from them. That will require recognition that their privileged lifestyles are underwritten, as Umair Haque, the London-based consultant and author, notes, by “centuries … of colonialism, capitalism, supremacy, patriarchy”. That has created a world where Europe, which grows no coffee, can make 5 times more from coffee exports than sub-Saharan Africa which does. The global vulnerability to diseases like covid 19 rests on such distortions and inequalities.

Changing this will be impossible if the mold is not broken. And building a world that works for everyone will require more than just tinkering at the edges. As Haque puts it, “without building global systems, nothing much will change”.

At the close of the 19th Century, the scourge of sewer gas was not resolved by reducing the number of flush toilets within individual homes and retreating back into a world of cesspools and outhouses. It was ended through improvements in the unseen plumbing and infrastructure that ensured the sewer system worked for everyone. Not only did London get a new sewer system but in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of patents for sewer trap designs as well as water closets and flushing devices.

Similarly, the coronavirus pandemic can provide an impetus for a flood of ideas on how to construct a better global order, rather than for retreating from it. Doing so will not be easy or cheap. But it can be done if the West is willing to invest the resources that it has taken from the rest of the world. And to stop taking a dump on them.

12 Years A Symbol

As the saying goes, success has many fathers. The meteoric rise of actress Lupita Nyong'o from relative obscurity to global sensation has spurred a bitter exchange within Kenya as to what her success means.

Most have celebrated what they see as the triumph of a can-do Kenyan attitude in the face of massive odds, and proof that all is possible if only one stayed true to oneself and was prepared to do the hard work. Others, while acknowledging and celebrating her admirable effort and undeniable talent, however point to her privileged background as a scion of Kenya's elite and see in her story evidence of the massively skewed access to resources that denies many other "Lupitas" their chance to shine. Unfortunately, the latter take has been interpreted by some as an attack on the actress herself.

Interestingly, this debate did not attach to that other global start that Kenyans have laid claim to. When Barack Obama ran for and was elected President of the United States, there was near universal celebration of the achievement, despite the obvious fact that his association with Kenya is rather tenuous. There was also near complete unanimity that had his father brought him up in Kenya, his chances of rising to the highest office in the land would have been close to nil.

Just compare his fate to that of his younger step-brother, George. They share a biological father but have different mothers. Both were raised continents apart by their mothers and grandparents. While one went to ivy league schools and ended up in the White House, the other dropped out of school, joined a gang, went to prison and dwells in rather more humble surroundings on the outskirts of Nairobi. As would write: "If there was a leading light in the Obama clan, then [Barack] was it; and if there was a shadowed place that no one liked to talk about, then I guess that was me."

Of course, as Lupita demonstrates, living in Kenya is not necessarily a sentence to the hard labour of poverty (or a one-way ticket to criminality). However, for very many, and perhaps for the majority, it comes very close to that. Dr Alex Awiti, director of the East African Institute and assistant professor at Aga Khan University, describes Kenya's as "a tale of three countries: the obscenely rich country; the gasping middle-income country, teetering on the precipice; and, the miserably poor country." It is a country where two-thirds of the population survives on less than 3 dollars a day and the lowest ten per cent of households control just one per cent of national income. On Lupita's side of the fence though, the outlook is much brighter. Here, where the richest ten percent who control nearly half the national income live, opportunity abounds.

Needless to say, none of this is her fault and neither does it detract from the magnitude of her achievement. But having stated it anyway, one must also admit that she has benefited handsomely from this set of circumstances. Acknowledging this is important because it is necessarily because it allows us to understand that behind the beautiful Kenyan facade she presents to the world lies a "shadowed place that no one likes to talk about."

The existence of this dark place, where most Kenyans are condemned to eke out their existence, is a direct consequence of the existence of Lupita's world. The Kenyan elite's history of theft, oppression and marginalisation has produced this state of affairs. It is a terrible and a terribly unfair burden to place on her young shoulders, but it is nonetheless one she will have to bear along with the accolades. It is the unfortunate shadow of her success and cannot be divorced from it.

Given that, is there a connection between the Kenyan discomfort with acknowledging privilege and our reluctance to confront the elite who benefit from it? I think there is. The depredations of the elite have created an impoverished society where most operate on the brink of existence and must constantly court its largess and patronage. In this circumstance, the many are reduced to sycophancy not only to curry the favor of the wealthy few, but also to vicariously experience the material success that they are too often denied. The conspiracy of silence is abetted higher up the food chain with few wishing to rock the boat. As one of my tweeting friends put it, acknowledging the privilege "is facing it & for most of us, admitting we accrue some benefits from the system that we just don't wanna give up."

Like it or not, Lupita's success, and the dispute it has engendered, are therefore symbolic of the contradictions inherent in Kenyan society. She is both an inspiration to millions of young people who dream of joining the stars, and a reminder of the system that suffocates those very dreams.