Abstract:
South Africa had the privilege of learning from how other countries responded to the crisis engendered
by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this opportunity seems to have been lost as the South African
government made the mistake of transposing a developed-world preventive response onto a largely
developing-world populace. The government failed to map out how factors such as South Africa’s
demographic composition, spatial architecture, the incidence of poverty and informality, and competing
epidemics would interact synergistically and shape epidemiological outcomes. In this article shaped
by sociological insights, we show how the application of governance systems can give rise to many
unintended social consequences when the knowledge forms upon which they are based are not suitably
tailored to meet the needs of the specific local context. We highlight how informality can play a valuable
role in fighting the COVID crisis and suggest that, to truly succeed, the government should include rather
than override informal principles of governance.
SIGNIFICANCE :
We present a brief comparative analysis of the responses of different nation states to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The insights contribute to the sociological literature as well as to other disciplines, highlighting how local
contextual factors are (re)shaping the form of policy responses as well as their associated consequences. More
specifically, we focus on the importance of adopting a political economy approach in the analysis of informality
and motivate how and why this may be useful for consideration in areas related to policy development and
governance more broadly
