YACOOB ABBA OMAR: Closing the gap between Buddhist thinking and Brookings policy actions

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a set of scenarios in September that dealt with the future of Covid-19. It brought to mind the report by the Mapungubwe Institute dealing with epidemics in Africa, which was released in 2019, just before Covid-19 hit our shores.

Both endeavours highlight the importance of think-tanks and research institutes focusing on the long term when dealing with issues facing nations and humanity. In fact, when the team working with the institute’s executive director, Joel Netshitenzhe, was consulting on its draft founding document, one of the respondents quipped: “You guys need to work out whether you are a Brookings think-tank which focuses on immediate policy issues or, given your navel-gazing about the long-term horizon, you are a Buddhist retreat.”

This is often the tension think-tanks face: too far into the future and some of their thinking may be considered outlandish; too close and it may sound like it is just regurgitating current thinking or even clichés. However, think-tanks that act as searchlights into the future need to be supported, and their outputs appreciated and used to guide policy and strategy.

For example, the SA government was quick to recognise the value of the work the Mapungubwe Institute had done in its epidemics research and commissioned it to carry out a risk analysis of its Covid-19 response. A year later a University of Pennsylvania-based think-tank index listed the institute among the best think-tanks with policy and institutional responses to Covid-19.

Another example of effective forward thinking is the scenarios developed by the Indlulamithi Project in 2017, which have now entered the lexicon of political discourse. Nayi le Walk meant to describe a country on track to achieve the 2030 targets of the National Development Plan; iSbhujwa describes the continuation of the status quo at the conceptualisation of the scenarios; but the third one, Gwara Gwara, is probably the best remembered of them. 

This described a floundering false dawn of dreams deferred and  was meant to have been the “worst case scenario”. It is better known because not only is it the scenario that has come to pass, but because the current reality is so much worse than what was imagined in 2017.

So which futures do the WHO 2026 scenarios capture, and more importantly, what can be done about it? Just as Indlulamithi chose popular dance forms to describe the scenarios, the WHO used popular songs to capture the essence of theirs.

Happy Day describes a world where humanity manages to get on top of the Covid-19 pandemic and enjoys the benefits of collaboration, focus, determination, community empowerment and hard work. I Love You, I Hate You is where the Covid-19 virus persists, with humanity managing to keep up its responses to it, but the long-lasting effects of the pandemic on health-care systems, economies and the environment are felt ever more acutely.

In Heartbreak Hotel the virus has evolved to become even more infectious, with the lack of a unified global response resulting in “a two-speed world characterised by increasing socioeconomic, technological, environmental and political disparities”. If all that wasn’t bad enough, Here Comes Trouble spells out not only a worsening Covid-19 pandemic but also the emergence of a new one, with the burden of a double pandemic resulting in economic collapse, worsened by ecosystem degradation and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events. 

Like all good scenario exercises, the WHO 2026 scenarios do not provide explicit strategies on what should be done. They require the engagement of governments at all levels, health departments, corporates in every sector, as well as trade unions and civil society. The best utilisation of scenario planning exercises should answer these crucial questions: if these scenarios were to come to fruition, will our current policies and challenges be adequate to handle the challenges posed? And what do we need to change today to prepare ourselves for those possible futures?

In this way we can ensure that our research and scenario meditations about the future can be translated into practical actions for the present.

• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute.