With much to be proud of and much to regret, we mark a Year of Covid

If the Sunday Times had reported in its edition of March 8 2020 that in the coming 12 months one South African in every 40 would contract Covid-19, it would have been judged harshly in the court of public opinion.

The front-page news that day was somewhat less dramatic: South Africans in Wuhan, China, were keen to reach the safety of home - "Get us out of here!" the headline blared - and "SA's second patient infected with Covid-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, is a 39-year-old woman from Johannesburg who has been admitted to hospital".

It seems almost unfathomable that so much has changed in the year since then. Most soberingly, the country has experienced more than 145,000 excess natural deaths - about three times the official coronavirus death toll - and few of us have been left untouched by the tsunami of grief unleashed by the first 21st-century pandemic.

Today, as we mark the anniversary of Covid-19's arrival on our shores, it would be easy to dwell on the negatives, for they are innumerable. But the end of the local epidemic's second wave and the chink of light provided by the successful administration of the first vaccines are just two of the reasons this is a good time to call to mind some of the positive lessons from the toughest year many of us have had to live through.

Most importantly, we have learnt a great deal about the calibre of our health workers and the quality of their characters. In the light of their heroic efforts in what another early Sunday Times headline dubbed "The war we have to win", we should ask ourselves whether it is now fair to lump them in with overpaid pen-pushers in a bloated public service who are preparing for a nasty wage battle with the government.

Our health scientists, similarly, have shone brightly. They have developed ways of collaborating that have surprised even them, and their innovative thinking will stand the country in good stead in difficult years ahead.

Armies of ordinary people in diverse communities have trampled the barriers that have so long divided South Africans, discovering a unity of purpose in overcoming the common challenges thrown up by the virus. Community action networks, for example, have sprung up countrywide, linking rich suburbs with poor neighbourhoods and forging bonds of understanding, support and co-operation that have displaced suspicion, prejudice and fear.

The lockdown provided incontrovertible evidence that abuse of alcohol is the taproot of the violence that poisons so many families and communities. The knowledge that drunken thuggery can be tamed should be a powerful incentive for policymakers who can no longer ignore the price being paid for our out-of-control love affair with booze.

Some of the more mystifying attempts to change our behaviour - the futile ban on tobacco sales and attempts to regulate what articles of clothing we could buy spring to mind - have exposed the unfitness for purpose of certain political leaders, and personal protective equipment corruption provided us with far too much dirt about the quality of our governance - information we should apply when we visit the ballot box this year.

In our working and family lives, we have adapted to new circumstances and overcome problems we hadn't even dreamt of this time last year. By being forced to press the reset button on so many of the habits that used to define our daily routines, we have discovered how pointless and even destructive some of them were, at the same time that we were plumbing depths of resilience we didn't know were there.

Many more challenges lie ahead, and SA's late arrival at the vaccination party - which has delivered nearly 300-million jabs worldwide but only 100,000 within our borders - means a third wave of Covid-19 is unavoidable. This time, however, our new habits will leave us well placed to minimize suffering and inconvenience.

The price of political freedom is often said to be eternal vigilance, and the same is true of the personal freedom we have come to value so much more in the Year of Covid.