Community Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown in Diepsloot

Abstract

The first case of COVID-19 in South Africa was confirmed on the 5th of March 2020 with more cases confirmed in the following days (Carlitz & Makhura 2021, 2). On the 15th of March 2020, the South African President announced broad measures that were meant to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus and to protect people’s lives (Carlitz & Makhura 2021, 2). These included a hard lockdown that would bound every person who was not considered an essential worker to their home. Community leaders were not considered “essential” and therefore, were pushed into the private sphere and could not carry out any of their public duties during this time. Community leaders play a very significant role in communities like Diepsloot due to the socio-economic issues that the community often deals with and the leaders’ commitment to community development. Therefore, this research report focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the leadership structure in Diepsloot. The chapters in this report are arranged in a chronological order starting before the pandemic until 2023 when there was a significant return of collective action in the community. The research report features the narratives of six community leaders and how their leadership roles were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. My main finding was that there were different shifts that took place in the community leadership structure of Diepsloot and these are exhibited by the narratives of my participants. I found that leadership roles of people changed during the pandemic and people who were previously not community leaders, became leaders due to the moments of crisis that arose in the later stages of the lockdown.