Since it became a democracy in 1994, South Africa has been, in law, one united country. The apartheid system's attempt to justify white domination by forcing black people to become citizens of legally independent statelets is over. But, while it has one common citizenship, it houses two worlds. This has shaped its fight against Covid-19.

It is common to point out that, according to official data, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. It is equally common to remark on the contrast between the privileges and luxuries a minority enjoys and the poverty and squalor in which most are forced to live. So much of a commonplace is it that, in 2019, ahead of that year's elections, Time magazine devoted its cover story to pointing out precisely this. But that hardly makes the country unique: inequality has been growing across the globe for decades and it is hardly the only African country in which there are large disparities between the lives of the well-off and those of the poor – and where some live in comfortable suburbs, many others in underserviced slums. What makes South Africa a standout in Africa is that the divide is less one between rich and poor as between inhabitants of two very different worlds. This makes the country more similar to those in Latin America and so it may be no coincidence that Latin America, too, has experienced high levels of Covid-19 cases and deaths.

To understand why this is so, we need to remind ourselves of the country's history. Under colonialism and apartheid, the two worlds were a product of law enforced by an army and police force. Initially a Dutch and then a British colony, the country formally became a Republic in 1960. But the attitudes and habits which underpinned colonisation survived. This was hardly surprising since so too did white rule, which sought to transplant the dominant culture of Europe and North America (or, since in those countries, as elsewhere, culture is diverse and ever-changing, what white South Africans believed that culture to be) on African soil.