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The emergency of Covid19 took SSA by surprise. Countries in the region
did not seem prepared for the arrival of a pandemic of this magnitude.
Seeing the effects of the disease in some parts of Asia and Europe, many
wondered what damage it could inflict on SSA, a region still
experiencing the negative impacts of HIV/AIDS and Ebola pandemics. The
billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates warned as early as February that
Africa would be the worst-hit region of the world.
The
response in most parts of Asia and Europe was to lockdown countries.
This meant minimizing interaction
between individuals through actions such as closure of schools,
restaurants, bars, and imposing restrictions on movements and events.
Most parts of SSA followed suit with Rwanda being the first country to
do so on 22dn March 2020. Several other countries did the same in the
next days and weeks.
While there has been support for lockdowns by several scholars who posit
that lockdowns are useful for
slowing down the spread of the disease, preventing the health care
systems from potential collapse and preventing deaths.
While they are well-intended and
useful, these arguments in support of lockdowns are in some cases out of
touch with reality in most parts of SSA.
Firstly, most (but certainly not all) living conditions of people in SSA
are not compatible with the concept of social distancing. For example,
while there are some exceptions, there are several African cities that
are home to slums and other unplanned settlements which means that
people in such situations live densely together and have to share
essential services such as water sources, and bathrooms with several
other people in communities. This means avoiding contact to stop the
spread of the virus is practically impossible under such living
conditions.
Some scholars also point out that the economic situation at household
level in the region are at odds with the demands of a lockdown.
Lockdowns require people to stock-up food and other essential products.
However, most households in SSA have limited savings and mostly live
hand-to-mouth with the majority of them working in informal sectors
where job-security is mostly nonexistent. Stifling the possibility of
people’s daily money-generating errands via the given lockdowns makes it
difficult for households to stock-up and let alone realize the
possibility of three decent meals a day. Some families have already
expressed fears that they might die out of hunger before the virus
visits their households. To these families, the certainty of starvation
is less daunting than the lottery of covid19. All in all, lockdowns are
set to rise the already critical poverty levels in the region, and
without state-sanctioned social protection measures, the situation may
soon become dire. Lockdowns seem to have been initiated and implemented
oblivious to these realities.
The argument that lockdowns relieves pressure on the health care system
is disingenuous. Firstly, not only is this argument wrong in the African
context, it is also an inherently flawed and highly questionable
epidemiological preposition. Total lockdowns seem beneficial in
situations where the virus presents an imminent threat to a large
proportion of the population. This is not the case for covid19. The
most-at-risk population has been identified to be the elderly and adults
with some pre-existing illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, respiratory complications and compromised immunity systems. By
focusing on the entire population, a lockdown seems to take away
specific attention from this population at risk. This is a
sub-population that needs specific attentive care, but its needs are
obscured by an attempt to appeal to a much larger but relatively
low-risk population via lockdowns. This is a relatively small proportion
of the population which can be isolated and provided with the best
available care to prevent them from getting sick in the first place. A
general focus on the entire population via total lockdowns takes away
focus, money, specific attention and care that should go to this risky
group. It is this lockdown approach that is likely to increase the
number of those who actually get seriously ill and overwhelm the health
care system in the region.
The lockdown also presents some psychological ramifications which may
have long term effects on the region. Armitage and Nellums (2020) for
example show that covid19-related lockdowns led to severe anxiety and
depression, especially among the marginalized groups. This is because
lockdowns curtail channels of constant social interaction thereby
leading to feelings of loneliness and social isolation which are a good
breeding ground for anxiety and depression. Most African cultures thrive
on daily social contact and interaction, thus these measures at such
proportion present even greater risks to Africans in whose culture grand
social isolation is alien. Burgess (2020) also emphasizes that the
marginalized people within Africa face daunting mental health problems
given the lack of economic security. It therefore seems plausible that
lockdowns have only worsened the situation.
Politically, it seems some politicians are taking advantage of the
pandemic to seize more power and further their acts of political
repressions. There are already reports in which security personnel in
countries like South Africa, Zambia and Kenya have been deployed on the
streets in an effort to protect the ends of the lockdown but are
simultaneously engaged in gross violations of human rights. Reports of
state-sanctioned violence against the marginalized have been reported in
various parts of Africa.