Was wearing a facemask a form of cultural resistance or a crisis communication challenge? Retrospections on Vrede Community experiences.

Abstract

It has been three years since the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the warning level for COVID-19 and declared it a global public health emergency. Since then, the virus has killed approximately seven million people. However, some experts believe that this data is an underestimation. The WHO's declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic in 2020 caught everyone off guard, but it was necessary for the global health watchdog to do so that it could be addressed as an emergency. Wearing a facemask was one of the ways public health planners and virologists in many countries thought of stopping the virus's spread before the development of a vaccine. The public, including some conservative politicians in the world, received it with mixed feelings, and some outright rejected it. The apathy towards wearing facemasks also reverberated in South Africa. This study explores this apathy with a view to appreciating the attitudes of the people and why they think wearing a mask is awkward for their culture. Using a qualitative and structured interview research approach, the study interviewed male and female participants in the Vrede community in Freestate Province, and concluded that some of the apathy was based on misunderstandings because the messaging from the government on wearing a facemask and COVID-19 did not quite address their cultural biases and attitudinal dispositions and was not firm on enforcement. The study concludes that the government had to have approached the advocacy for wearing facemasks from an inclusive stakeholder management and crisis communication perspective.