COVID-19 pandemic exposed world inequalities says UN chief
Antonio Guterres says the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequality and injustice that exist in the world.
The United Nations Secretary-General delivered the 18th Nelson Mandela Lecture yesterday.
It was dedicated to Zindzi Mandela - the daughter of our former president and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Ambassador Zindzi Mandela passed away last week after contracting the coronavirus.
Guterres says the virus has laid bare issues that have been ignored for decades and pose great risks for those living in poverty.
READ: Zweli Mkhize pleas to SA to take COVID-19 seriously
"Inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis," he said.
He added entire regions that were making progress on eradicating poverty and narrowing inequality have been set back years, in a matter of months.
He's likened the virus to an X-ray that exposes fractures in the fragile skeleton.
"It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere. The lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; the fiction that unpaid care work is not work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world and the myth that we are all in the same boat."
"Because while we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some of us are in superyachts while others are clinging to the floating debris, said Guterres.
