Human Insecurity in South Africa and Zimbabwe: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Exposed the New Reality

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic which started in China spread into the Southern African region when South Africa recorded its first case in March 2020. By mid-2023, when the pandemic finally subsided, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region had become the most affected region in Africa after recording more than 4,5 million infections and more than 100,000 deaths. Focusing on the SADC region’s two countries, this paper examines how lack of decent health facilities worsened the plight of less privileged citizens in the face of the deadly virus. The challenges faced by the less privileged and the impact of the pandemic demonstrated that it was not only the virus that killed people, but lack of access, poverty and inequalities. The paper further argues that the COVID-19 pandemic served as an exposé of several decades of policy misalignment, which conflates state security and human security. The paper posits that the COVID-19 pandemic should serve as a wake-up call not just at the national, regional, and global levels, but also to realign thinking and policy in line with the reality that non-military threats now pose more harm than ever before in the history of humanity.