鈥業f you don鈥檛 work you don鈥檛 eat鈥�: Where lockdowns have extra sting
| Mexico City and Johannesburg
The number of coronavirus cases in Mexico was growing quickly, bending toward the kind of curve that had turned cities like Paris, Rome, and Wuhan into ghost towns, empty and silent.聽
But in Mexico City on a recent morning, though the streets were quieter than normal, the dissonant orchestra of daily life continued. Sweet potato vendors sounded their iconic steam-engine whistles. Flatbed trucks piped their monotone jingle as they circled the city collecting broken electronics and used mattresses. Subway trains clattered along their tracks, their doors squealing open to disgorge crowds of passengers. And tortillas sizzled on street-corner comales,聽large round griddles.
In the tranquil Coyoac谩n neighborhood, a sign beside one food stand offered a succinct explanation for why the coronavirus hadn鈥檛 interrupted daily life the way it had elsewhere.聽聽
Why We Wrote This
As the novel coronavirus spreads, governments are watching each other, trying to learn what policies work. But poorer countries, where much of the labor force is outside safety nets, are entering less-charted waters.
鈥�,鈥� read the sign, photographed by journalist Andalusia Knoll Soloff. 鈥淚n Mexico, if you don鈥檛 work you don鈥檛 eat.鈥�
Editor鈥檚 note: As a public service,聽all our coronavirus coverage聽is free. No paywall.
Across the globe, governments have faced tough choices about how to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. Let life go on, and the disease can spread unchecked. But order everyone home, and the economy buckles.
These choices are especially painful in countries like Mexico, where social safety nets are often flimsy and millions live off whatever they can hustle together each day. For these countries, stopping the coronavirus demands something more complicated than a cut-and-paste of responses that have been tried in China, Europe, and the United States. Instead, it requires bending those solutions to meet the needs of the world鈥檚 poorest people, for whom staying home without work could be as deadly as walking into the virus鈥檚 hotspots.
鈥淎 lockdown, or even social distancing, is actually a bit elitist as a concept,鈥� says Dr. Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, a senior researcher at the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya. 鈥淲hen people live in houses that are very small and close together, when they work to earn enough to live off of that day, how can you expect them to stay home and stay indoors to keep an unknown virus away?鈥�
Opposite approaches
At one extreme in answering that question is Mexico, where President Andr茅s Manuel L贸pez Obrador for weeks brusquely ignored calls to institute nationwide restrictions on movement, or to close businesses. 鈥淩emember,鈥� his government implored in a March public health notice, 鈥渢he illness caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus is not serious.鈥�
Schools were closed, and in recent weeks he has agreed to certain measures, including limiting gatherings to 50 people and shuttering nonessential businesses.聽But his priority, he says, is to protect the 60% of Mexican workers who labor informally 鈥� hawking fruit, scrubbing toilets, preparing tacos, and doing other piece work that pays job-to-job, in cash. Because these jobs are unofficial, they tend to be unprotected by employment law or government safety nets.
At the other end sit countries like South Africa, where a quarter of the labor force is also informal.聽But unlike Mexico, it has instituted one of the world鈥檚 strictest lockdowns, which has shuttered most industries, and prohibits even outdoor exercise and the sale of alcohol and cigarettes.
鈥淭he countries that have acted swiftly and dramatically have been far more effective in controlling the spread of the disease,鈥� explained President Cyril Ramaphosa as he announced South Africa鈥檚 original three-week lockdown 鈥� now extended to five weeks. Since the lockdown began on March 26, indeed, the rate of newly diagnosed case , from 110 per day before the lockdown began to 67 per day by its second week.
Globally, most experts and leaders acknowledge that some form of societal shutdown is necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19. 鈥淲e know how to bring the economy back to life. What we do not know is how to bring people back to life,鈥� on March 27. 鈥淲e will, therefore, protect people鈥檚 lives, then their livelihoods.鈥�
But shutting down countries where more than half the population has not gone seamlessly. Police and soldiers deployed to enforce the lockdown in poor South African communities have beaten and publicly humiliated those who resisted the orders, conjuring up painful echoes of apartheid-era lockdowns to violently quell black resistance. In Kenya, for resisting curfews and other disease control measures than have died from the disease itself.
And many of those resisting the lockdown restrictions say they simply have no other choice.
鈥淭he thing that makes people keep going out is their empty stomach, that they simply don鈥檛 have anything to eat,鈥� says Luyanda Hlatshwayo, who works as an informal recycler in Johannesburg and is also an organizer with the African Reclaimers Organization (ARO). In normal times, recyclers like Mr. Hlatshwayo spend their days sorting through garbage bins left out for collection, picking out recyclable goods, which they then sell to centers around the city.
Those centers are now closed, since the country did not deem them an 鈥渆ssential service.鈥� But many recyclers continue to roam their old routes, dodging police and hoping for handouts from sympathetic suburbanites. 鈥淧eople who have enough to eat, enough to live off of, they follow the rules,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut the ones who don鈥檛, can鈥檛.鈥�
Attempts to help
Resistance from the country鈥檚 poorest people has pushed the South African聽government to ease some of its more onerous restrictions. Shared minibus taxis 鈥� the most common form of public transportation 鈥� are now allowed to travel at 70% capacity,聽up from 50% at the start of the lockdown. And in early April, officials announced that informal hawkers of fruits and vegetables would be allowed to sell their wares on the streets again, as long as they registered to do so.聽
鈥淭he only way lockdowns can continue in societies with high poverty is if government is responding swiftly and directly to the needs of very poor people, whether that鈥檚 food or just direct transfers of money,鈥� says Hannah Ryder, a Kenyan economist and former diplomat who runs the consultancy Development Reimagined.
Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, governments have begun to adapt their responses to assist poor people, particularly those in informal jobs most likely to fall through the cracks of other social assistance. (The accounts for 89% of employment in sub-Saharan Africa, and 54% in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the International Labor Organization.)
Peru and Argentina, for instance, have begun to vulnerable people. Forty-seven African countries, meanwhile, have instituted for citizens to access essential services, from waiving utility bills and fees on mobile money transfers to direct food or cash aid. And India has promised $22.6 billion for direct cash transfers and food assistance, which it hopes to use to feed more than 800 million people, after its lockdown left millions of workers without wages.
But many countries have struggled to keep up with the sheer magnitude of need when their economies are already in free-fall. In South Africa, for instance, phone lines for numbers set up for food assistance ring unanswered, and most of the aid given to informal workers so far has been private. 鈥淣ot five cents from government,鈥� says Mr. Hlatshwayo, whose organization ARO has raised nearly聽$10,000 in to support out-of-work recyclers.
鈥淲e aren鈥檛 the problem鈥�
In Mexico, meanwhile, most informal workers have continued working, and say they will do so as long as there are no alternatives. Although the federal government has not implemented strict restrictions 鈥� taco stands and other informal food stalls can still sell their food to-go 鈥� some states and municipalities have implemented curfews or lockdowns.聽聽
鈥淲hat I understand is that the virus is a really, really big risk. I truly believe that,鈥� says Arturo Granadas, who sells fruit in pop-up street markets in Mexico City called tianguis, and who serves as a representative for a union of informal hawkers in the capital. Each morning, he puts on a face mask and heads out to set up his hot-pink tarp stall, just as he has for the past four decades. 鈥淚f the government doesn鈥檛 provide alternatives [for informal workers], we will have no choice but to continue to go out and work,鈥� he says.
But like grocery-store employees and delivery drivers in Europe and the U.S., workers like Mr. Granadas and Mr. Hlatshwayo say they hope this crisis will be a wake-up call about how important their industries are, and how crucial it is for government to support them 鈥� not only in times of crisis.
鈥淲e are constantly criminalized, stigmatized, and persecuted in Mexico,鈥� Mr. Granadas says. 鈥淏ut we aren鈥檛 the problem. We are the solution to the government鈥檚 inability to create jobs and stable employment.鈥�
For experts, too, a silver lining of this pandemic may be the light it shines on people at the margins, whose lives have historically been easy for those in power to ignore.聽聽
鈥淢aybe the right model to address this is not only the health challenges, but the many underlying challenges, like poverty, education, and access to care,鈥� says Dr. Hermes Florez, the interim chair of public health sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. 鈥淲e have to address those to better be able to tackle future pandemics.鈥�
Editor鈥檚 note: As a public service,聽all our coronavirus coverage聽is free. No paywall.
