Thursday, November 21, 2024

Renny Simone

Ramaphosa mask flub goes viral

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa struggles to put on a cloth mask. The incident has been heavily lampooned on social media. SOURCE: eNCA

With the eyes of the nation upon him, President Cyril Ramaphosa gave his fellow South Africans something they desperately needed: a good laugh.

The moment came at the end of Ramaphosa’s Thursday-night address, in which he announced the government’s plans to begin easing lockdown restrictions starting 1 May. 

Ramaphosa said that even as the country begins to reopen, all citizens will be urged to wear facemasks whenever they leave their homes.

The President then took out a cloth mask he had brought with him to the podium, intending to lead by example.

And, after ten grueling seconds of struggle that temporarily blindfolded him, he managed to put it on, before turning quickly from the podium and shuffling off the stage.

This clip shows the mask incident in its full glory.

The response from social media was nearly instantaneous.

“If I can’t see the virus, the virus can’t see me”, wrote one Twitter user, along with a screenshot of the mishap in which Ramaphosa’s eyes are totally covered by the mask.

Others referenced Bird Box, a 2018 horror film in which characters have to cover their eyes to avoid an evil force that kills all who see it.

In a lighter vein, SABC presenter Minnie Dlamini Jones thought the moment revealed something about her country’s sense of humor.

“I don’t know a nation on this planet that loves to laugh like South Africans”, the actress tweeted.

And at least one person wondered whether the flub was, in fact, an act of patriotic self-sacrifice.

“What if Ramaphosa was struggling to wear the mask on purpose in order for us to laugh,” @GetsonChirwa said.

Whether or not the act was intentional, Ramaphosa has since embraced the joke.

“For those of you who were laughing at me yesterday”, Ramaposa told reporters on Friday, as he pulled out another mask, “I’m going to open a TV channel where I am going to teach people how to put on a mask.”

Ramaposa joked about the incident with reporters on Friday.

The President, however, made no attempt to don the mask while cameras were rolling.

‘Reopen America’ protests linked to powerful Republicans

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: A face mask on a pile of $100 bills. Some prominent Republicans have been accused of giving material and moral support to ‘Reopen America’ protests. SOURCE: Elliot Alderson from Pixabay

Are the ‘Reopen America’ protests the start of a new conservative movement, a cynical political ploy, or something in between?

America’s unprecedented economic shutdown, meant to slow the spread of coronavirus, has spawned protests in various US cities against social distancing measures. Many of the protesters are fans of President Donald Trump, a Republican, and Democratic governors have drawn much of the ire.

One protest this week, dubbed ‘Operation Queen’s Castle’, was the third directed against Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Demonstrators gathered on Thursday outside the Governor’s Mansion, demanding that she begin reopening the economy.

Connections to big-name conservatives (and their wealthy foundations) have prompted some outlets, such as the New York Times, to describe the ‘Reopen America’ protests as examples of ‘astroturfing’. A play on the concept of ‘grassroots’, or bottom-up, organising, ‘astroturfed’ movements are defined by The Times as artificial, top-down affairs ‘that are manipulated by Washington conservatives to appear locally driven.’ 

Whitmer supports this hypothesis.

‘This group is funded in large part by the DeVos family,’ Whitmer said of the Michigan protesters, reported The Daily Beast. 

Betsy DeVos, an influential Republican and native Michigander, is currently serving as Trump’s Secretary of Education. DeVos has been linked to the Michigan protests by way of the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group that helped organize the protests and which has received over $500,000 from DeVos’ family, according to Al Jazeera.

DeVos is not the only prominent Republican implicated in the protests. Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to President Trump, talked about his role in planning ‘Reopen’ protests in Wisconsin on a conservative YouTube show. In addition to a controversial remark comparing the protesters to American civil rights icon Rosa Parks, Moore divulged details of the political power behind the demonstrations.

‘We have one big donor in Wisconsin, I’m not gonna mention his name, and … he said Steve, I promise I will pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested,’ Moore said.

The YouTube program on which Trump adviser Stephen Moore appeared. The quoted comments begin at 15:20.

The astroturfing theory leads some experts to conclude that the protests do not reflect a genuine movement. Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, who has written books on the Tea Party movement and the anti-Trump resistance movement, says that the “Reopen America” protests are not in the same league as these heavyweights.

“I suspect we’ve got a similar combination of top-down influence from high-dollar organizations and some genuine energy at the grassroots level,” Skocpol told Vox’s Sean Illing. “But I also suspect this is mostly being pushed and promoted from above.”

Skocpol’s theory may help explain why these protests have gotten so much attention, despite the fact that only 10 percent of Americans want to end social distancing to stimulate the economy, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. In the absence of widespread support, powerful voices – from Fox News personalities to President Trump himself – have helped to raise the profile of the ‘movement.’ But Skocpol says these tactics have their limits.

A tweet from President Donald Trump apparently supporting protesters’ demands that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reopen her state’s economy. Trump also called for the ‘liberation’ of Minnesota and Virginia.

‘I don’t think it’s going to morph it into anything on the scale of … the Tea Party back in 2010. I just don’t see the conditions for that,’ Skocpol said.

‘But I expect it to bubble on, because I think Donald Trump will continue to encourage his hardcore supporters to show their support for him publicly until such time as he can hold big rallies again.’

Nurses’ union threatens strike unless Ramaphosa meets demands

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: A frame from a video that has been widely circulated on social media, apparently showing police action against nurses demanding PPE equipment. Source: Twitter @MichaelSun168

Some South African nurses are threatening to stay home from work unless the government meets their demands for, among other things, increased compensation and more protective equipment by 1 May.

The Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union (YNITU), which represents nurses and other healthcare workers, made the strike threat on Wednesday in response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest address to the nation. Ramaphosa’s Tuesday-evening speech outlined a R500 billion relief package designed to alleviate the economic crisis posed by coronavirus. But YNITU believes that not enough is being done for healthcare workers.

“[YNITU] couldn’t stomach President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation that once again failed to address the plight of those who are battling the Covid-19 pandemic in the frontline”, the union said in a media statement.

In addition to longstanding concerns about a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) in South Africa’s hospitals, the union believes that nurses should receive greater compensation for the work they are doing.

“The least the government could do is give nurses an income tax break or a Covid-19 danger allowance in these trying times”, the statement said.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), with which YNITU is aligned, supported the demands in a media release that was generally critical of Ramaphosa’s address.

But the South African Department of Health has warned that a nurses’ strike would be a criminal offense, reported News24. 

“The Ministry of Health implores every health worker to contribute in the fight against this pandemic,” Popo Maja, spokesman for the Department of Health, told the outlet. 

Another union representing nurses, the Democratic Nursing Organization of South Africa (Denosa), has also criticised the government’s position on nurses. A member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), from which SAFTU split in 2017, Denosa has not called for a strike. But comments from Secretary-General Cassim Lekhoathi express similar disappointments to those raised in the YNITU statement.

“The frustration comes because in April there was supposed to be a salary increase, but [the] government has basically said they don’t have the money to do it,” Lekhoathi told The South African website. 

“It was a slap in the face of nurses,” Lekhoathi continued.

The strike threat has generated significant debate on social media. #CovidNurseStayAway has been tweeted over 10,000 times since YNITU tweeted the initial statement, and the hashtag spent hours as the top-trending in South Africa on Wednesday, according to trends24.

Some South Africans had harsh words for the nurses threatening to strike.

“This Hashtag is just pure arrogance,” one user tweeted. “[I’m] afraid for patients that are being treated by nurses with this mentality”.

https://twitter.com/MothoJordan/status/1252936798025760768

“This hashtag tells me a lot about how many people didn’t know what becoming a nurse was all about,” said another.

https://twitter.com/EarlyKrish/status/1252934701280645120

Others are expressing solidarity.

“I stand with our nurses, They are the Most over worked and disrespected civil servants,” one user wrote.

https://twitter.com/uLerato_pillay/status/1252944710362071040

President Ramaphosa is due to address the nation again on Thursday evening. The speech is set to focus on the government’s plan to ease lockdown restrictions, according to TimesLive.

Parents knew it all along: kids just want to know, Why?

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: A young child and an adult read a storybook together. SOURCE: Lina Kivaka from Pexels

If you want to nurture the little scientist in your child, give him or her a book. That, at any rate, is what the scientists are saying.

A new study published this week has found that children prefer storybooks that tell them something about how things happen – which may help parents understand why their children’s favourite question is, Why?

Jean Piaget, a 20th century pioneer of developmental psychology, often called children “little scientists” because of their natural curiosity and insistence on explanation.

Piaget and others established that children tend to prefer “causally rich” information – that is, information that helps explain “the why and how of the world”. 

But the new study by researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas, published in Frontiers in Psychology, has taken a novel approach to the question.

Where most previous studies have taken place in artificial laboratory settings, the authors of the latest research wanted to see whether the findings could be repeated in a more practical context.

“There has been a lot of research on children’s interest in causality, but these studies almost always take place in a research lab using highly contrived procedures and activities,” according to one of the researchers, Margaret Shavlik, of Vanderbilt University.

“We wanted to explore how this early interest in causal information might affect everyday activities with young children – such as joint book reading.”

Shavlik and her co-authors – Amy E Booth, also from Vanderbilt, and Jessie Raye Bauer from the University of Texas – anticipated that young children would prefer books with more explanatory information to those with less. The researchers selected two books by the same author – one “causally rich”, the other “minimally causal” – and controlled for factors like subject matter, art style, and words per page, minimizing the chance that preferences would be influenced by anything other than causal content.

A group of 48 children, all three or four years old, were selected for the study. A female experimenter read both books to each child. Afterwards, the children answered some basic comprehension questions, and told researchers which book they liked better. Two weeks later, the process was repeated, except that the books were read in reverse order.

The results? Over 40% of the children preferred the causally rich book in both sessions. If left to pure chance, only 25% of the children would go for causality both times – leading researchers to conclude that their hypothesis has some validity.

“We believe this result may be due to children’s natural desire to learn about how the world works,” Shavlik said.

The results of the study.
SOURCE: “Children’s Preference for Causal Information in Storybooks”, Frontiers in Psychology, Shavlik, Bauer, and Booth

In addition to affirming the causality hypothesis, the study has important implications for childhood literacy. Parents might have better luck getting their child excited about reading if they choose books that explain something. 

“If children do indeed prefer storybooks with causal explanations, adults might seek out more causally rich books to read with children – which might in turn increase the child’s motivation to read”, Shavlik said. In other words, adults can stimulate young minds (and make their own lives easier) by picking books that satisfy children’s natural curiosity.

The researchers say these findings raise important questions about the practical relevance of causality. Does causal richness have an impact on how easily kids acquire information? Can these results be repeated in a more natural setting, such as by recording parents and children in their home?

The authors don’t have answers yet, but they believe their study “lays a solid groundwork” for exploring the questions.

Anti-black racism reported in China’s “Little Africa”

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: Guangzhou, a city in China’s Guangdong province that is home to a large African immigrant population. SOURCE: stben on Pixabay

A group of African ambassadors in Beijing have written a letter to the Chinese foreign minister, urging the government to take action on xenophobia against African immigrants in China.

The open letter from the ambassadors demands “the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments” used against Africans. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was copied on the letter, according to Reuters.

The ambassadors list several allegations of xenophobic practices, including unlawful evictions, forcible testing and quarantining, and acts of public discrimination against people of African origin.

Most reports have come from Guangzhou, a coastal city in Guangdong province, where a sizable population of West African immigrants has settled in an area now known as “Little Africa”.

“People are not happy”, Maximus Ogbonna, a Nigerian community leader in Guangzhou, told The Washington Post. Ogbonna is in his second forced quarantine after returning from Nigeria, despite having tested negative for coronavirus.

Other reports of discrimination have been shared on social media. 

SupChina described a Chinese-language cartoon published to WeChat with the title, “An illustrated handbook on how to sort foreign trash”. The cartoon targeted ‘foreigners’, especially Africans, for allegedly flouting quarantine guidelines. 

And a twitter video, apparently showing a discriminatory notice posted in a Guangzhou McDonald’s, has prompted an apology from the company, according to the BBC. The notice read, in part, “from now on black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant”.

The international community has responded swiftly to the allegations.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) also released a statement condemning discrimination against African nationals living in China.

The Chinese embassy in Nigeria initially denied allegations of racism. But a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry acknowledged the concerns in remarks published on Sunday.

“The foreign ministry will stay in close communication with the Guangdong authorities and continue responding to the African side’s reasonable concerns and legitimate appeals,” said the statement.

Outside of China, instances of xenophobia, ranging from racist TikTok videos to US President Donald Trump’s controversial use of the term “Chinese virus”, have been widely documented. There have also been reports of coronavirus-related deportations of undocumented immigrants from the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Some commentators are highlighting the political implications of these developments. Mills Soko and Mzukisi Qobo, professors at Wits Business School, have suggested that the reports coming out of Guangzhou may affect China’s influence in Africa.

“They could … fuel a backlash against China and Chinese interests on the continent,” Soko and Qobo wrote in Daily Maverick.

China is expected to decide soon on debt relief for African countries, many of which are asking creditors to freeze or cancel loan payments in light of the economic recession. According to Reuters, China is the largest creditor operating in Africa, where it has extensive commercial interests.

Coronavirus crisis ‘may push half a billion into poverty’

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: Children wash their hands in Sudan. Washing hands, along with maintaining social distance, is one of the best ways to minimize transmission of coronavirus (Oxfam)

Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty as a result of the developing economic crisis precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, Oxfam said in a briefing released on Thursday.

But the ‘Economic Rescue Plan for All’ that the influential nonprofit has proposed requires significant international cooperation.

The Oxfam report calls for a massive influx of spending from richer countries to poorer, coordinated by organizations like the Group of 20 (G20) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Oxfam estimated that at least $2.5 trillion would be required to avert the most catastrophic effects of the downturn, most of which would need to be distributed in the form of cash payments to individuals. Some regional organisations, including the African Union (AU), are already requesting aid.

“[Coronavirus] is an international challenge which requires an international response,” Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, told France 24. The AU is asking for $100-150 billion in short-term relief. Mahamat said he hoped that the coronavirus would serve as “a hymn, an anthem for multilateralism and solidarity”.

The record of prominent international organizations, however, has caused some to doubt the global community’s ability to cooperate effectively in the face of this crisis.

Stewart Patrick, a UN observer from the Council on Foreign Relations, has criticized the United Nations Security Council’s inaction in response to coronavirus. The Council was due to meet in the course of the day to discuss the impact of the pandemic for the first time since the crisis began.

“What is all this good for if, when push comes to shove, the countries of the world don’t actually do anything?” Patrick asked in a Politico article.

The headquarters of the United Nations in New York City (Anfaenger from Pixabay)

The European Union, which is currently deliberating over a 546 billion euro response package for member nations, is also showing signs of strain. Talks fell through on Wednesday night, according to the BBC, and a deal has not yet been struck. For some, including Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the crisis threatens not only European economies, but also the future of the EU itself.

“If we do not seize the opportunity to put new life into the European project, the risk of failure is real,” Conte told the BBC.

Italy is among the countries hardest hit by the virus.

The headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium (Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay)

Eyes are now turning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is due to begin holding its annual spring meetings on 17 April. The meetings, which will include the IMF, the World Bank Group, and G20, will be held virtually for the first time in the IMF’s history.

Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, offered a grim assessment of the situation in a speech on Thursday, in advance of the meetings. The economic impact of the virus, she said, will be catastrophic.

“In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression,” she said, as reported by The Guardian.

The Guardian reported that nearly 90 low- and middle-income countries have asked the IMF for financial assistance since the start of the pandemic. Georgieva agrees that “low-income nations” deserve special attention. However, the IMF’s specific plans to help the world’s poor, and whether they are able to successfully coordinate a cooperative relief effort, will likely remain unclear until next week’s meetings.

Huge locust swarms threaten food security in East Africa as coronavirus hampers response efforts

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: A swarm of desert locusts, taken in 2014 near Satrokala, Madagascar (lwoelbern from Wikimedia Commons)

Nearly a month before sub-Saharan Africa recorded its first coronavirus infection, Somalia declared a national emergency in response to a different natural threat: swarms of desert locusts.

Somalia’s Ministry of Agriculture called the insects “a major threat to Somalia’s fragile food security situation” in a statement reported by the BBC in early February.

Two months later, as governments worldwide focus attention and resources on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, the locust plague has taken a turn for the worse.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned in its latest report that widespread rains that fell in late March could allow a dramatic increase in locust numbers in East Africa, eastern Yemen and southern Iran in the coming months.

The locust swarms, which feed on crops, represent “an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods” in affected nations, it said. Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia have been the hardest hit, but other East African nations, as well as parts of the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia, are also at risk.

A single desert locust (Ian Lindsay from Pixabay)

The African Development Bank recently approved $1.5 million in emergency funding to help control the infestations. A total of nearly $150 million will be required to stem the spread, and there is a significant shortfall, according to a statement released by the African Development Bank Group.

Coronavirus presents additional challenges. International attention has been monopolised by the pandemic, and funding is in short supply. More pressingly, flight restrictions have prevented the delivery of pesticides to affected countries. Some, including Kenya, are rapidly running out of reserve stocks.

“If we fail in the current [regional] control operations, because of lack of pesticides, then we could see four million more people struggle to feed their families,” said Cyril Ferrand, FAO’s head of resilience for Eastern Africa.

“If we don’t have pesticides, our planes cannot fly and people cannot spray and if we are not able to control these swarms, we will have big damage to crops,” Ferrand told Reuters.

A woman wearing a face mask sits in a near-deserted airport. Coronavirus-related travel restrictions are preventing the delivery of pesticides to affected countries (Anna Shvets from Pexels)

The pesticide deficit is another symptom of coronavirus-related travel restrictions, which pose the greatest threat to countries dependent on the delivery of international aid. Some organisations are in the process of negotiating “humanitarian corridors” to make sure necessary aid can be delivered. But in the meantime, Al Jazeera has reported that more than 20 low- and middle-income countries are facing vaccine shortages due to travel restrictions. 

Aid organisations are sounding the alarm.

“While the threat posed by COVID-19 must not be underestimated, if the chaos caused by this pandemic is allowed to curtail ongoing humanitarian assistance, the results will be catastrophic,” Doctors Without Borders warned.

New US Covid statistics suggest communities of color hit hardest by virus

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: A map of the United States, with red circles indicating Covid hotspots (Martin Sanchez on Unsplash)

New data suggest that the coronavirus, which has been described by some as ‘the great equaliser’ due to its virtually universal impact, is not as egalitarian as it first appeared. Factors like race and class are increasingly being recognized as having a significant impact on how – and how badly – people are affected by the virus. 

Statistics from the US are beginning to show Covid-19’s disproportionate impact on Americans of color. In Chicago, where 30% of the population is black, African Americans account for more than half of reported cases and nearly 70% of deaths, according to data reported by The Hill. Statistics published by the Louisiana Department of Health tell a similar story: black Louisianans make up less than a third of the state’s population, but account for more than 70% of Covid-related deaths.

Steven Thomas, director of the Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland, has warned against ignoring race in coronavirus interventions.

“With a colorblind policy — ‘Hey, we’re all in this together’ — we’ll be left with an explosion of Covid-19 concentrated in racial and ethnic minority communities”, Thomas told Politico.

Demographic data from the national epicenter of the outbreak appear to supports Thomas’ view. Two of New York City’s hardest-hid neighborhoods, Corona and Elmhurst, Queens, have large communities of color, according to the 2010 census.

However, neither New York City nor New York State have released race-based data on coronavirus infections – a fact that has drawn criticism from some activists and officials.

In a letter addressed to Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams called on the city to “make all data on testing, including disaggregated by race, available to the public.”

Without race-based data, he wrote, it will be impossible to design policy that helps those at greatest risk of contracting the virus. “Tracking and publishing this data is critical to facilitating the allocation and distribution of resources to the areas most in need.”

But the issue is bigger than the immediate crisis, experts of health equity have pointed out. “A pandemic just magnifies the disparities in health care that many communities of color face,” Dr. Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven, told Reuters. 

Ibram Kendi, Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, pointed to other complicating factors – including mass incarceration, homelessness, and undocumented status – that put people of color at higher risk. The “racial pandemic within the viral pandemic”, Kendi explained in The Atlantic, reflected and reproduced race-based inequalities in America.

“Sometimes racial data tell us something we don’t know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know,” he said.

As experts call on the government to make race a focus of response efforts, the debate has made its way to social media. Madonna was roundly criticized for calling coronavirus ‘the great equaliser’ in a video she filmed from her rose-petaled bathtub. 

One Twitter user blamed “environmental racism” for the disproportionate death rates of black Chicagoans. 

Another called “systemic racism … a matter of life and death.”

https://twitter.com/HawaiiDelilah/status/1247609355119124481

New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who covers racial injustice, agreed. “When Covid-19 first hit America hard last month, the narrative was that it was the great equalizer,” she said, in the first tweet of a longer thread. “But those of us who understand racial caste in America knew this could never be true.”

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1247176506452905986

Police face allegations of murder, abuse as SAPS enforces lockdown

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By Renny Simone

MAIN PHOTO: Police Minister General Bheki Cele and other senior members of the police executive conducted an inspection of lockdown operations in Limpopo yesterday. SOURCE: Twitter @SAPoliceService

Police action is killing South Africans nearly as fast as COVID-19, if allegations reported to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) are to be believed.

Complaints received by the police watchdog implicate the South African Police Service (SAPS) in eight deaths since the start of the nationwide lockdown – only one fewer than the number who have died from the virus itself. 

The release of information about the allegations comes after multiple reports of police brutality during the lockdown. At least three police officers are already facing murder charges for the deaths of South African citizens, according to News24. 

IPID is investigating nearly 40 complaints that have been filed since the start of the lockdown on 27 March. 

These include cases of nonfatal police brutality, some of which have been documented and widely shared on social media. One video, posted to YouTube, purports to show a man being beaten for violating the lockdown. Another, appearing to show policemen firing on a group of protesting healthcare workers with flash grenades and rubber bullets, has been retweeted hundreds of times.

This video, apparently circulated by a community activist in Khayelitsha, was uploaded to YouTube by news site GroundUp. It appears to show a man being beaten by a police officer for violating lockdown regulations.
https://twitter.com/Briggar/status/1244908720741666817
This tweet is one of many that include this video of police tossing flash grenades and firing rubber bullets on protesters, apparently at Bongani Regional Hospital in Welkom, Free State.

President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed concerns regarding police violence during a coronavirus update delivered on Monday. “We have made it clear that the task of our security personnel is to support, reassure and comfort our people … they must not cause harm to any of our people,” he said.

But some experts, including Andrew Faull of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, fear that police violence may escalate an already-dangerous situation.

“If on top of their socio-economic hardship citizens routinely experience or perceive abuse by state officials during the lockdown, it is possible that some may rebel,” Faull wrote for Daily Maverick. “[T]he risks posed by continued, illegitimate state violence … could be as great as those brought by the pandemic.”

Others are asking for patience. In an anonymous op-ed published in Daily Maverick, a police officer described the severe stress law enforcement is under during this crisis, urging citizens to cooperate. “[L]ockdown only works if there is compliance,” the officer wrote. 

The effects of the lockdown on police-citizen relations might be clear only in retrospect. Daneel Knoetze, writing for GroundUp, noted that the present rate of complaint submissions to the IPID is in line with pre-lockdown trends, indicating that the problem predated coronavirus. 

But even if the issue of police violence is old news, Knoetze hopes that its increased publicity will have positive effects – such as an increase in funding for the IPID.

“[P]oliticians used the uniqueness of the lockdown moment to call out abuses by the police,” he wrote. “These calls will ring hollow in time, if they do not lead … to policy interventions to hold the transgressors and police management accountable long after the lockdown has ended.”

Feel-good fake news? Shutdowns bring spate of urban wildlife sightings – and plenty of misinformation

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By Ainsley Ash & Renny Simone

Viral photos, purporting to show wild animals ‘reclaiming’ cities left vacant by coronavirus shutdowns, have been making the rounds on social media. But are these feel-good posts too good to be true?

A recent tweet featuring photos of dolphins and swans swimming in clear Venice canals has amassed tens of thousands of likes. The user celebrates that “[n]ature just hit the reset button on us”. Another tweet celebrating the first sighting of the critically endangered Malabar civet since 1990 has been retweeted thousands of times – with a video to prove it.

Like the countless others that have followed, these posts claim that shutdown protocols are causing the return of wildlife to the world’s now-vacant cities. The reappearance of these animals has been the subject of articles from outlets including The Guardian, the New York Post, and The New York Times. 

Posts like these provide a silver lining for victims of COVID-19’s disruptive spread, but the reality behind them is often disappointing. National Geographic wrote that the video of the ‘Venetian’ dolphins was actually taken at a port hundreds of miles away.

Why do people want to believe these posts? Susan Clayton, a psychology and environmental studies professor at the College of Wooster, told National Geographic, “People hope that, no matter what we’ve done, nature is powerful enough to rise above it.” The sense of hope that the stories bring might feel real, but the posts themselves often are not. 

As for the posts that are genuine, there is usually much more to the story than coronavirus shutdowns. Urban ecologists have been studying the return of wildlife to cities for decades. Many of these changes came before coronavirus and the emptying of urban spaces. In San Francisco, for example, excited Twitter users have been uploading photos of coyotes roaming the streets. But an article about the city’s rebounding coyote population was published on February 20th – more than two weeks before San Francisco’s first reported case of COVID-19. 

Ecologists have been quick to warn against the spread of misinformation about urban wildlife. Parveen Kaswan, a member of the Indian Forest Service, corrected a misleading photo purporting to show deer walking the streets of Jaipur. According to Kaswan, the photo was actually taken in Haridwar, where such sightings are common – the city borders Rajaji National Park. “[S]preading positivity is one thing,” Kaswan tweeted. “Dumbing down society is another.”

Others, though, have taken a more lighthearted approach to the issue of misleading wildlife posts. Memes and screenshots depicting everything from dinosaurs in New York’s Central Park to the cast of Cats in a London square celebrate the ‘return of nature’ to the world’s cities.

It is too early to tell which impulse – to celebrate, educate, or make fun of – will win the day.

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