In a very short space of time, we had gone from hearing about an obscure disease in Wuhan, China, to learning that “patient zero” had been diagnosed in SA. A few days after that, President Cyril Ramaphosa appeared on television to announce the country would come to a grinding halt.
Since then, we have lost — officially — more than 50,000 citizens (though the number is likely to be much higher), and data on transmissions, hospitalisations and vaccinations dominate public discourse.
But according to Mokoena, our society has also seen other fundamental changes that are less easy to calculate: the way we think, perceive our country, and chase the “fix” that will end this not-so-brave new world.
In this podcast, she speaks to Sunday Times Daily reporter Tanya Farber about ways in which the SA and global psyche has changed since a pandemic swept across the globe, bringing with it a fight for vaccines.