Memorial at the Mandela capture site memorial. Pic from internet, photographer unknown.

We’re all broke, exhausted, dazed, going out of our minds. For millions of South Africans, the pandemic and accompanying lockdown, in which our government essentially locked up us with promises to take care of us, and then walked away, tossing the key down a drain, has meant unimaginable new levels of poverty and suffering.*

And now it’s Mandela Day (aka Middle-Class-Feel-Good Day). Not that I have ANY problems with the goodwill and funds raised today — I just wish this was something that we (most especially businesses) did in a sustained way, instead of in a single spasm of benevolence a year.

The other issue is that while it’s great to spend an hour making sandwiches — and if that’s what you did, well done — it’s also a good idea to make longer-lasting contributions. There are thousands of small, community-based hunger mitigation organisations active around the country, often just a handful of determined aunties armed with cooking pots, and their greatest needs are often practical: a supermarket might donate all their slightly wilted veg for soup, but where is the gas to cook it with?

So there are many small things we can still do today, and tomorrow, and the day after, even if we’re reeling from reduced incomes, job losses, worn down by homeschooling, scared, angry and weary to the bone.

Here are some cheap (by middle-class standards) ways to make a difference, to add just a spoonful of kindness to a world that’s become hideously harsh.

1) Give food. People are starving. I won’t even waste words on the inhumanity of shutting down school-feeding schemes, or the evil of food parcels mouldering in warehouses because of corruption and red tape. Let’s rather roll up our sleeves and get stuck in. While donating food parcels and ingredients to soup kitchens are wonderful things to do, there’s a huge need for grocery vouchers, which allow families to get what they need according to their storage and cooking facilities, health profile, and so on. You can send these directly to individual’s cellphones: Google will tell you how.

2) Ask ask ask. Don’t assume you know what’s needed. Approach your local feeding scheme (it may be running out of your church hall, primary school, Scout or yoga centre) and find out what small items they need most urgently.

3) If you have a car, stock up on small grab-bags of portable food (fruit, hard-boiled eggs, rusks, etc) to hand out to people begging at traffic lights.

4) If you’re making soup to give away, make concentrated amounts on a “1 stock/paste + 1 water” basis — a litre of “strong” soup to which the recipient can add a litre of boiling water. (Add a label explaining this.)

5) Provide the necessary practical bits and pieces: community kitchens are desperate for big pots and pans and fuel, as well as ingredients like salt, dried herbs, stock cubes and the like. Donate a saucepan or canister of gas for Mandela Day.

6) I never thought I’d say these words, but strong plastic containers with seal-tight lids are worth their weight in gold at the moment. Give away Tupperware, ice-cream and marg tubs, big yoghurt pots — those coconut oil buckets with handles are especially useful for carrying and storing fresh and dried food.

7) It’s not just food that’s desperately needed. According to local CANs (Community Action Networks), these are the most necessary items: disposable nappies (also words I never thought I’d write, but consider the misery of cloth nappies in a winter pandemic with water shortages AND loadshedding); prepaid electricity (you can send this directly to people’s meters); paraffin and gas; kettles, hot-water bottles and blankets; OTC medicines and kitchen remedies (for example, ginger-lemon-turmeric-chili-clove brews and menthol oil for steaming); the makings of hot drinks so people can stay warm and hydrated; data; airtime; toiletries, including sanitary pads.

8) Water: several regions in South Africa are without water right now. Each time I try to imagine maintaining hygiene protocols in a pandemic with no access to water, my mind boggles. Donate those 5-litre bottles where appropriate (regions in the Eastern Cape are especially desperate).

9) Give away hand sanitisers, soap, masks and gloves. It’s no good telling people to wear masks (as indeed we all should) when they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Donate masks, and buy yours from the many local outfits who donate a mask for everyone purchased. This also gives you a chance to support small local industries.

10) Thanks to Eishkom (there are simply not enough swear words in all the languages), people now also need torches, batteries, chargers, solar lamps, those small gas cookers. Give where you can.

11) Warm clothes, and not just jerseys and other bulky clothing: offer scarves, wraps, gloves, hats, mittens, beanies, socks and other one-size-fits-all items that are portable and can be worn around the clock (including for sleeping in). Nothing to give? Find your granny’s wool and crochet hook, and get cracking.

12) If you know a family nearby who has members with Covid infections, here’s how to help. Drop off the means of keeping warm (kettles, blankets, hot-water bottles, heaters, thermoses of tea and coffee, etc); and nourishing food. (These are the two most vital needs, based on personal experience AND anecdotal evidence.) This goes especially if the adult/s in the household are sick in charge of children. Send over ready-made meals, and if you have spare old-model cellphones, load them up with games and loan them, along with data, so the kids have something to do while their caregivers sweat it out. Provide books and toys. Make sure these families feel socially supported, even as you keep your distance. They’ll need to self-isolate for up to 14 days, so keep going, or set up a local roster for dropping off dinner. Or, if you can afford it, send a supermarket or restaurant food delivery at regular intervals.

13) Support small, local businesses, or help them adapt: order a weekly veg box from your local farm stall, buy a friend’s music or book, donate your fabric stash to a mask-making operation or sewing collective, and so much more. Check out what’s going on in your ’hood — this is where social media is a boon.

These are just some of the little things you can do to make every day Mandela Day. And yes, these gestures may feel so tiny as to be pointless — a bit like the things I’m always encouraging people to do to help the ailing planet. But never forget the parable of the widow’s mite from Mark’s Gospel — I take hope from that.

Good luck everyone, and remember to send in your tips for helping — even as we’re hitting the wall of donor fatigue and all-round bamboozlement (there’s a very weak alcohol-related pun in there somewhere, but let me not go there).

* For a more encompassing view of what’s broken in our society, and how to fix it, I recommend this excellent piece by some very good people. There ARE indeed solutions.

Homemade stock paste in progress.

I’ve been eager to start posting recipes, combining my interest in “green” food (good for people, good for the planet) with thrifty but fun and delicious ideas for lockdown, and also hopefully helping to prevent a bit of food waste. But someone whose opinion I respect pointed out that she was finding all the social media pics of mouth-watering dishes and jolly recipes a bit insensitive, given that hunger has immediately become an acute crisis for so many. I saw this debate bubbling (courteously, for the most part) along on other pages: the general consensus, including from some pretty financially strapped families, was that food is also important as a form of connection in a time of physical distance. As well as the most urgent human need after air and water, it has a social role in sharing that can’t be discounted. Artist David Hockney, in lockdown in France at 83, announced that “The only real things in life are food and love, in that order” — according to his little dog, Ruby.

Meanwhile, there is no getting away from the exceptional morale-boosting effect that my personal superhero, Jack Monroe, is having in the UK simply by advising folk on Twitter what to do with their pantry contents (follow her on @bootstrapchef or #lockdownlarder). It’s not just clever combos: she tells people when they can and can’t ignore sell-by dates, how to check supplies for contamination, safety precautions (I had forgotten that dried kidney beans have to be boiled for at least 20 mins to prevent them from causing food poisoning). She’s protecting the health of families and keeping tons of food out of rubbish bins in a nation that’s taking a hammering. It’s a shocker that middle-class families have to be taught to cook, but then late capitalism has drowned us in those poxy over-packaged “ready meals”, rendering us helpless and wasteful. This is an opportunity to change that, for good.

So I hope there’s value to my idea of sharing larder contents to get ideas for dishes that are tasty, easy to make, and won’t leave you looking as if you spent lockdown in a darkened cupboard. I made Stalwart Sister and Delightful Niece send me a list of all their pantry staples and condiments, and a highlight of each day is concocting them a meal from these ingredients, which also means that Niece is learning to cook new dishes. It’s a lovely way of being “in their lives” while we’re apart.

But let’s please, please continue donating as much as we can to the now significant movement across the country to get food parcels to those who need them most. Please post details of your preferred means of donating in the comments: today, mine is the heroic PHA initiative: click here for details,

But first (bring on the trumpets): how to make the vegan stock paste I have been promising forever: an excellent way of using up any veg you panic-bought that is starting to look a bit droopy or gnarled.

I created this after much internet research because I needed a vegan stock that was hearty enough for punchy stews (like this one) or soups like minestrone, but also delicate enough not to overwhelm a risotto or creamy soup. (You can of course use this in any savoury dish, meat, fish, you name it. But I wanted that umami tang that often goes missing in vegetarian food, and which can’t always be replaced with a teaspoon of Marmite or splash of soy sauce.) The other trouble is that almost all manufactured veg stock tastes to me of celery, celery, celery and salt. I HATE cooked celery. It bullies out all the other flavours.

So here we go, the absolute rock-bottom basics. As a minimum, you will need one huge onion, two big carrots, a cup of loosely chopped or torn fresh herbs, half a head of garlic, a third to a half a cup of salt (more salt, and it keeps longer, but the flavours are less subtle), and the juice and zest of one big lemon. The herbs change all the time (I've used thyme, rosemary, sage, winter savory, basil, lemon grass, za'atar, garlic chives, parsley, marjoram, oregano — I tend to throw in the more robust herbs at the blending stage, and leafier ones like mint, basil, lovage and Italian parsley, finely chopped, right at the end of the simmering stage). To these cleaned and peeled veg, you can add: fennel (both the fresh bulb and the dried seeds — check first, some people dislike the anise/liquorice taste), leeks, spring onions, radishes, a small turnip or parsnip … to ring the changes, I’ve also tried this with the juice and zest of an orange (this is grand with fresh sage).

Once your blender jug is full, add just enough water to enable the blades to blitz the veggies to a fine mince. Now put a good glug of oil (I use olive or coconut oil, but any will do — just not butter or marge) in a heavy-bottomed pan and saute the veggie paste very, very slowly on low heat, stirring continuously, sweating out as much liquid as possible. It will slowly turn into this grainy paste, and should eventually be thick enough to stand a spoon in — it takes about 30-40 minutes, but I sometimes do it for an hour. Cool, spoon into a spotlessly clean jar, and refrigerate. Mine lasts months in the fridge, but to be safe, rather divvy into small portions and freeze, then defrost as needed. Use a heaped teaspoon wherever you would normally use a stock cube.

Other variations: chuck in a punnet of mushrooms for mushroom stock, half a cup of soaked sun-dried tomatoes or a small tin of tomato paste, a bag of fresh green beans. (Pick one of these options: they’re all quite robust, so use for heartier dishes.) You can do an Asian version: basic mix to which you add lemon grass, coriander/dhanya, green chillies, basil, extra garlic, juice and zest of a lime. Amounts don’t matter too much, which makes this a very good way of using up stuff. I often add kale, spinach or chard. (No one has complained, yet.) Oh, and rocket. SO much rocket (which forms half my veg-bed output). My favourite is my basic one, with lots of herbs, but I add an entire preserved lemon. The results are faint-worthy.

Here’s an extra idea from Jack, so good I have to share: if you have a bag of fresh salad that’s looking a bit sorry for itself, pick out any vrot/liquefying bits, wash/wipe the remains, and visit Jack’s website here for a brilliant solution: salad-bag pesto.

Nog ‘n piep: if you have any neighbourhood shops, market farms or food stands open nearby, and you have to venture out for supplies, support them rather than the big supermarkets right now. Small businesses are nose-diving everywhere we look — help if you can. Obviously, do your homework: find out if they’re open and when, what their hygiene and distancing measures are, and what they would like you to bring in terms of packaging, etc. I’d rather supermarkets used their resources (refrigerated trucks, depots, staff, etc) to deliver food to townships — looks like this is happening in some parts of the country. Once again, check online to see how you can be part of these initiatives.

Louise Ferreira’s banana bread, made with a recipe from a 1981 Huisgenoot recipe book. (Proof that rereading your ancient cookbooks is a good idea.)

My favourite person on the whole of Twitter is British food writer and anti-poverty activist Jack Monroe — simply the best at providing cheap, delicious, easy and nourishing recipes/ideas. Every night, in an effort to keep unproductive worry at bay, I check her #lockdownlarder hashtag, where folk tweet her pictures of what’s in their pantries, or supply her with a list of the weird things they’ve found in cupboards, and she tells them what meals they can conjure as a result. I’ve learned so much (including what pease-pudding REALLY is), and I’ve been itching to try something similar for my food posts.

At first I felt I couldn’t chirpily ask the middle classes about the contents of their kitchens in a situation as dire as ours: where desperate people are literally begging for food all over the country, as standstill wages and lockdown restrictions hit them like a freight train (I’ll get back to this).

But millions in this country are still undergoing house arrest, have odd things in their pantries, bought too much fresh stuff, and are a bit perplexed. You all know how I feel about food waste (also see journalist Karin Schimke’s excellent recent writing on this); and the only thing worse than regular food waste is food waste during a national disaster.

I’ve realised that while our water crisis felt like familiar territory for me (I was eight when the borehole on our farm ran dry), the only preparation I have for any of what we’re currently facing comes from all the World War 2 novels I read as a child: classics like Hester Burton’s In Spite of all Terror and Jane Gardam’s A Long Way From Verona; later, novels by Nevil Shute, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Rosamund Pilcher, Nancy Mitford, Mary Wesley. And they all went on at great length about food and rationing, and the importance of eating as a form not just of fuelling, but boosting morale. There was something comforting and encouraging about their accounts of how thrilled folk were to swop their turnips for a few eggs, the “victory” recipes, the hints on how to stretch food and make the butter ration last.

I’d like to visit that comforting space again, and I’d love your ideas. Eating and cooking together is nurturing, a kind of hugging we have no option but to practice. There’s also the role of community, even if it’s the tiny one of your family. As someone who LOVES to feed people but who is eating solo at the moment, sharing recipes has a resonance beyond the practical for me: yesterday, someone I love who hasn’t been in touch for ages wrote from another continent to say she was making one of my soup recipes. I was delighted — but also surprised — at the jolt of emotional connection I got.

I can’t do what Jack’s doing, but I was thinking of having days/times (announced in advance) when folk can post me pics of food they have or present lists of ingredients on Facebook, and I will TRY to come up with suggestions, or post recipes via this blog. It could also be a fun way to teach the entire family to cook (domestic science home-schooling), and when this is all over, hopefully we will be more mindful and frugal food shoppers, and less wasteful and decadent cooks. (Even before all this, I was rapidly losing patience with the preponderance of pre-prepared clementine-chevre-oyster-mushroom-stuffed-chicken meals the supermarkets were serving up.)

The trick here is simplicity, and a little relaxation of the rules. For instance, I don’t do sugar or jam; but here are two nifty ideas (well, I think so) for using jam as a means of pepping up regular meals and savoury dishes — condiments are going to be important, but you hardly want to risk your lives and those of others by popping into the supermarket for them. So make your own…

Cheat’s chutney: if you have one of those padstal jars of jam lurking with nice chunks of fruit in it, you can heat it gently (start with a cupful) with a heaped tablespoon of finely chopped raw onion (more onion is good, but I am rationing mine — didn’t get quite enough). Optional but good: add crushed garlic and a pinch of some warm spice — ginger, paprika, chillies. Now add a little bit of vinegar (a LITTLE — no more than a dessert-spoon [10 ml] to start with). Apple cider is best, but any will do, just not balsamic — too sweet. Simmer until the onion has disintegrated into the fruit mix. Keep checking; if it still tastes like jam but weird, add another teaspoon of vinegar. If you have lemon juice, add a modest squeeze. And if you have fresh lemons, grated lemon zest will do wonders for this (and almost anything else you’ll ever cook).

Sweet chilli sauce: if you have a tin of smooth apricot jam anywhere, put some of it in a saucepan with a little water and heat slowly. Add a very little vinegar (same principles as above) and a good pinch of chilli flakes or chopped fresh chilli. If it looks too thick, add more water; you want it a bit runny. Also good with ginger and lemon, as above.

Something else making me smile is that all of my friends seem to be baking banana bread. It’s a good way to cheer yourself up AND use up your rapidly ripening bananas. But if you’re too harassed to bake or don’t have the equipment, Jack has a wonderful recipe for a banana hot-pot that is super-quick and easy (as in it takes SECONDS to prepare and cook, if you have a microwave).

My favourite trick with ripe bananas: peel and freeze them to make smoothies with (you need a jug blender for this). Dig out hunks of frozen banana and combine with yoghurt, milk (in my case, kombucha because I make my own and always have masses of it), cinnamon and any other fruit you have around, if you like — I am partial to granadillas. This is also a clever way to give the kids “milkshakes” for breakfast: per person, half a frozen banana, half-to-three-quarters of a cup of milk or yoghurt, any extra soft fruit that needs using up, two tablespoons of breakfast cereal (I’ve done this with raw oats, All Bran, granola, and they’re ALL good) and blend until the banana is smooth. This is also a good way of disguising the taste of powdered or long-life milk, if your family is fussy.

I think it might be good to focus on soups and curries at first (I can’t wait to talk spices!), so all that rapidly wilting veg gets used up. And (I know I keep promising), I’ll post the Famous Vegan Stock Paste recipe soon; an excellent way of using up strongly-flavoured veg.

And now is the time to remember all those whose single food shelf is pitifully bare, whose supplies are sparse, who literally don’t know where their next meal is coming from. If you have ANY money to spare, and you try a recipe here, maybe could you put something in a “tip jar” to donate it to the many NPOS and community action networks (CANS) or education feeding schemes? They are killing themselves (quite possibly literally) to get food parcels to the desperate and the vulnerable — please help them. These are all location-specific, so I won’t post links, but please share resources you know of in your own neighbourhoods.

As we’re barred from the beaches for a little while, I thought you might like a picture of Noordhoek beach.

Day 1 of Official Lockdown: here I am, in my nice comfy house, with a garden to stretch my legs, self-exercising fur children who don’t need home-schooling, a chest freezer full of food (this is normal, not pandemic-related), an internet connection. I have rewarding work lined up, masses of books in my TBR pile. I’m completely accustomed to working from home and living solo — both are deliberate lifestyle choices. Should I feel lonely (an incredibly rare experience), I can go find a cat — Boychik is ALWAYS up for a cuddle and a natter, even if his vocab is a bit limited.*

As one of my authors says, I’m better prepared than anyone she knows for the zombie apocalypse. And what the world is going through right now feels pretty close.

For me, this lockdown is no more than a minor inconvenience. I’ll miss seeing my friends, but I have the internet. I even had a Pilates class this morning via Zoom. Because I live in a retirement village (a long story), I’ve been offered meal deliveries and telephonic counselling.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so staggeringly aware of my privileges and advantages as a white middle-class woman with an education that has for decades allowed me the luxury of doing a job I choose and enjoy.

Meanwhile, the residents of Masiphumelele next door have been desperately imploring the City of Cape Town for days to send a water tanker. As of 7pm today, the first day of a national lockdown, it still hasn’t arrived. The community networks springing up everywhere are sending out repeated pleas from the townships: “We need food.”

Right now I understand the impulse of St Francis of Assisi, a rich young man who became revolted by his life of excess, and gave up all worldly trappings: looking around me, it seems I have too much of nearly everything — even books.

This chimes with the nausea I’ve long felt at the gulf between the uncaring rich and the suffering poor, a revulsion that’s been growing over the last decade. Last night I almost vomited when Haystack Head emerged from No 10 Downing Street to applaud NHS workers. The HYPOCRISY of it, after all his party has done to gut Britain’s health service! As one expat in Berlin tweeted tartly, “In Germany, we don’t clap for our health care system; we fund it.”

The other day, writing about supporting domestic workers during lockdown, I looked at a line about supplying a spray bottle if your worker “doesn’t have running water in her home.” And I realised it was an utterly surreal thing to say. WHAT THE DUCKING DUCK IS WRONG WITH US? That we expect women without access to water to come and scrub our TWO or more bathrooms and multiple taps? Yes, I know all about providing jobs and so on. But why do we even allow a society in which a family (one which overlaps with ours) has to live in a shanty without running water? What rampantly destructive epidemic of greed has made this possible?

When this is over, please dear Goddess, may we have learned the following lessons (and not paid too dearly for them).

Universal health care is not a luxury; it is a fundamental human right, and possibly the single most important duty of the state to provide. This has nothing to do with welfare and everything to do with the fact that our species is a herd in which our health is interconnected. Every pandemic ever has taught us this the hard way, and it’s time to relearn that lesson.

Mandatory paid sick leave (and maternity/paternity leave) is a fundamental labour right. (WAKE UP, AMERICA: I can understand a mom-and-pop business struggling to supply this, but it’s your richest companies that are throwing sick workers to the wolves.)

Like Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy, what really added rocket fuel to my feminism was the day I learned that not only was unpaid housework NOT factored into GDP; neither was unpaid child care. That mostly women, and poor women at that, were providing the global economy with BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS in utterly essential services, and not only were they not being paid for it; their contribution (nothing less than keeping society going) wasn’t even factored into their nations’ economies.

The stories emerging of parents and guardians learning exactly what caring for and educating children 24/7 involves are funny/not funny. We’re being reminded just how relentlessly hard this work is: I would rather clean public toilets (yes, I’ve done this, in rural France, no less) than be in sole charge of a pair of toddlers. Yet nannies and teachers are barely valued if we look at that indicator of worth of a capitalist society: paycheck.

Everyone is also discovering that it is simply not possible to work at the same time as supervising small children. But how many businesses and governments provide or subsidise child care? (hollow laughter).

And we’ve also had such a wake-up call about who does the essential work to keep civilisation running smoothly: the folk who grow, pick and pack food, who stock shelves and work at tills, who clear the garbage, who unblock our toilets (which reminds me, DON’T FLUSH WET WIPES!), repair our power and gas lines, and much more. And guess what: these are the people most likely to have rotten working conditions, poor pay, meagre benefits.

Plus all those now working remotely from home are realising they’ve been hoodwinked: they’ve been commuting to work (my idea of hell) either on jam-packed public transport or in stressful, polluting traffic for absolutely no good reason other than the assumption that left to work at home, we’ll all skive off. (Meanwhile, the freelancers I know are all workaholics; I don’t know any who don’t work at least a ten-hour day, often six days a week.) Also, and thanks to someone on Twitter for this, this means that one of the main reasons for excluding people with disabilities from the formal work sector — difficulties with access — is a crock.

As I’ve said before, we have gotten everything wrong: the way we treat the planet, resources like water, soil and food, women and children, the vulnerable in society. We allow and exalt pathological hoarding of wealth: I gagged this week when reading that Jeff Bezos, Mr Amazon, had put $25 million into a relief fund for his workers. Dude, in 2018, your company made ELEVEN BILLION IN PROFIT, on which you paid either NO federal taxes (according to most mainstream media) or 1,2% in taxes, according to Fox News. (For comparison purposes, when I last lived in the US, my modest fellowship was taxed at over 30%.) I reckon you should fork over five billion right now.

We need to change so much. We need to rethink our priorities completely. We cannot go on like this: the planet is in any case collapsing under the strain. Let’s spend this time of forced introspection thinking about ways to bring about a new kind of world, one that’s kinder and more fair, more flexible, more humane.**

To take action: look up your nearest CAN (google “community action network” or search on Facebook — Capetonians, look for Cape Town Together) to see how you can donate money for desperately needed food. Or donate to Breadline Africa with the reference “childrenlockdown” — they are making feeding children their priority right now. And please tweet @MayorDanPlato to remind him that people in Masi need that water tanker URGENTLY. (The City got tankers to Khayelitsha today, and they’re working as fast as they can, but: there are people with NO WATER. In a PANDEMIC.)

PS: This wasn’t planned as a scold. I started out intending to ask folk to share store-cupboard recipes. And realised I couldn’t write about the simple joys of cooking and eating until I had gotten this off my chest. Peace to all, and hang in there.

* Looking back on this, I cannot believe I wrote it four days after the onset of Covid symptoms. I thought it was anxiety that was making me breathless. Meanwhile, Covid pneumonia was wiggling its hands in the wings.

** Also looking back, I could weep for my idealism. I really thought the pandemic would make the world a better, kinder, more sensible and logical place. Witnessing it exacerbate almost every unpleasant human trait has been crushing.

Ironically, the only way we can do this is together. Max and Possum, my parents’ cats.

I have a horrible suspicion that the horse is bolted, and that by allowing South Africans three days of freedom to prepare for lockdown, we’ve created the perfect conditions for a viral storm. This as a result of the government feeling its way in the dark — how to manage lockdown in a gutted state with perilously few support networks in place, and in which a huge majority have shack roofs over their heads and family scattered around the country — but equally, of citizens exhibiting the most extraordinary levels of, shall we say, foolhardiness?* (translation: fuckwittery of the highest order). And being demonstrated by those who in terms of their education and access to information should really, truly, know better. Their blithe indifference to the social impact of their behaviour is going to cost lives.

The other distressing thing, especially in an apocalyptic world, is watching fungal blooms of rage and shrieking and whining everywhere, but especially on social media. Who knew that dogs could spark such debate and division?

Dear people: please stop. Stop the whining and the bashing and attacking everyone who is actually doing something to try to help. Stop savaging each other on community forum pages and WhatsApp groups. Just stop all the hate, there’s going to be enough terrible grief ahead, when we’ll regret the unkind words we hurled around.

Here are some practical ideas as we go into the unknown.

1) Stay home. STAY HOME. (I would write this in six-foot flaming letters if I could.) Especially if yours is a nice, cosy middle-class home with a fridge and a TV.

2) Stop and spend some time wrapping your head around the fact that we are ALL terrified and exhausted. And trying to make concrete plans (which parent should have the kids? How to take care of my autistic child now that their special school has closed? What to do about my mother dying of cancer in another province? How to help my addicted brother? How to stop my husband beating me over the next three weeks? [some help here] — all concerns I’ve seen come pouring across my screen) while reeling around in a shock the likes of which none of us have experienced before.

The entire world is in shock. Shock is notoriously exhausting, and it scrambles the brain. I also have a completely unscientific theory that because our situation is unprecedented, we’ve having to create new neural pathways in our brains, and that is super-tiring. Understand that shock, stress and fear are a poisonous brew, and that people are not necessarily thinking clearly. Then TRY to be compassionate.

3) If you have a cushion of wealth (i.e. a sturdy roof over your head and food in the cupboard) at this momentous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons time, stop again and imagine how much more terrified and exhausted you would be if you were poor and vulnerable. Try to stand in those shoes, if only for a few minutes. Now choose an NPO or organisation near you that’s supporting the most needy in a maelstrom that’s only going to get worse, and HELP. Give time, skills, contacts, money. (Selfishly, this will make you feel less helpless.)

4) Social media is going to play a HUGE role in getting the world through the times ahead. It’s never been more NB, and looking at the role of public messaging in World War 2, the importance of using it to convey accurate information and boost morale is critical. Also, bearing Number 2 above in mind, try to be measured and calm on social media. Read people’s posts carefully. I’ve seen a huge uptick in folk misunderstanding comments and then flying off the handle in knee-jerk responses. Before saying or typing anything you may regret, go put the kettle on. Then come back and try to be kind and constructive.

5) Be kind, but that doesn’t mean being soft. Some things are always reprehensible, but especially so now: spreading fake news or fomenting racial hatred are unforgivable at this time. Be firm and clear about this, and most especially don’t pass on false info about the virus. You should run ALL so-called medical and scientific facts through a minimum of three reputable sources before posting (this post tells you how to fact-check). Yes, Mr “I’m not an epidemiologist, but…”, I’m talking to you.

6) Understand the basics of how to offer online support. Do NOT give advice unless it’s asked for. Most people just want to be heard, to feel that they’re not alone. A SA woman stuck in London got the dreaded bug, and had a miserable and terrifying week, with days of symptoms so severe she wondered if she was dying. She reached out on Facebook. Blow me down, some dude wrote her an essay on how she would be fine if she just gave up wheat and dairy. (And no, don’t @ me about the wonders of this diet — that’s not the point.) The corollary to this is understanding where people are coming from: when I went through a hideous trauma some years ago, someone I didn’t know well plagued me to try a certain kind of therapy. I counted to about a thousand, then tried to get to the bottom of it, and sure enough, THEY had suffered a similarly hideous trauma, which had been hauled out of the closet of their mind, and they were projecting their means of coping onto me. So even that bloke yelling that not being able to walk his dog is like apartheid might in fact be yelling because he fears the next three weeks might mean the end of his marriage, that he might never see his 84-year-old father alive again, that he himself might die by drowning in his own lungs. (He should still stop yelling, though.)

7) And that brings me to the topic, not of dog-walking, but compromise and common sense: for instance, I’m amazed at how many seem to think a dog is a luxury like a flat-screen telly, which can just be turned off. Dogs don’t use litter trays, and if they’re in an apartment, they are going to have to be taken out for poos, even if it’s to a patch of grass or pavement (I do NOT have to tell you to clean up after them, right?). Likewise, it’s nice to exercise outdoors, but having seen marathon runners in Alaska train indoors (something they do all winter long), dancing around the house is the least you can do. The point: THINK before you blast all and sundry, but let people get stuff off their chests as well.

8) On the subject of rants: last night’s ministerial press briefing was mostly impressive. I won’t say anything about the patriarchal militarist barking out commands as if the nation was a pack of naughty schoolkids, or the bumbler who just frothed, but the rest did a creditable job. I was particularly impressed by the humility of Ebrahim Patel, who explained that this was a learning curve for everyone, and that things would be adjusted as they and we went along. Here’s where a little compromise and flexibility would be useful: I disagree with the ban on cigarettes (even though I’m allergic to them), and although my first response to the alcohol ban was “oh good, this will lower the levels of domestic violence”, my next was “o fok, the only thing worse than being stuck in lockdown with a drunken abuser is being stuck with an abuser going through cold turkey withdrawal.” (Also, if addicts start having DTs and seizures, they will overload a medical system that needs to be cleared for COVID action.) I understand the broad-principle reasoning (as it is, can you imagine how many cartons of ciggies were bought today for resale on the black market?), but what about a halfway measure — RATIONING? Allowing the purchase of liquor and ciggies, but no more than one pack or bottle per person per day? The virus is whooping and shrieking around those queues outside the bottle stores — not a good move. Anyway, what we should be doing is supporting government right now (there go my anarchist credentials). We can carp about their mistakes later, especially if those mistakes only become clear with hindsight. They’re doing a far better job than leaders in many other nations I could mention.

9) Once again, with bells on it. BE KIND. WE need to save every scrap of energy for fighting a terrifying pandemic, not each other. We also need to prepare for the coming of a new world order (well, I hope so — if there’s one lesson we’re learning, it’s that our current social, political and economic systems are broken). So let’s start practicing decency, calm, and the ability to see ourselves as part of a communal network, as in the poet John Donne’s famous lines:

No [one] is an island entire of itself; every [one] 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.