Dr. Aceng, the Minister of HealthJuly 30 marks the end of a 42-day lockdown placed on Uganda in
June by Gen. Yoweri Museveni among measures to control the spread of Covid-19. Security
forces have since June 18, when he made the announcement, been forcefully stopping
any unauthorised movement of people during day or night. The millions of Ugandans
who are starving in their houses will be anxious to know whether the additional
chains on their lives, as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns, are loosened
or tightened. The most logical thing in our circumstances would be to open and
let people return to work. Uganda cannot defeat Covid-19 with authoritarianism and
guns, but people can negotiate their way through it with their attitude and
actions.
The NRM government’s target is to vaccinate 50 percent of the
population which is about 21 million people. By early this week the country had
administered just over 1.1m dozes of covid-19 vaccines. It is not clear how
many people have so far been vaccinated but Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja
told Parliament last week that just about four percent of the target number had
received the jab.
While we wait for the vaccines, which the government is
begging from richer countries, we will have to continue with our home made
herbal concoctions whether we have the virus or not (there is no capacity to
test us) because that is the best we can do.
If you cannot vaccinate people, and you can’t feed them, it
is ridiculous to stop them from finding their way around the situation.
Unfortunately, the state has increasingly been taking away people’s power to the
extent that by now, the central leadership is totally authoritarian, and local
leadership has been rendered powerless. Our responsibility and ability as
individuals and communities have been robbed away by a few individuals who use
authority and the gun to squeeze us into destitution – that state where you
feel incapable of anything other than following orders and receiving whatever crap
is thrown at you.
For the good of the nation, it is important to acknowledge
what works and what does not work, under our circumstances. Most Ugandans live
like chickens. If they don’t work today it means they will have nothing to eat
tomorrow. Lockdowns are a far greater distortion to their livelihoods than the
pandemic.
I am among those who strongly opposed the first lockdown in
March 2020 as it loomed. I even sent a communication to Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng,
the Minister of Health, showing her an alternative approach but I think she was
being bombarded with a lot of information during that time so mine could have
gone unnoticed. Like most people do these days, I took my frustrations to Facebook
and warned that someone would fall from heroine to villain. The judgment is
yours. But what did we achieve in the first lockdown?
The priority was to stop the spread of the virus: “Wash your
hands, sanitise, keep a social distance, stay home.” Wherever a case was
reported specialists flew in with an ambulance. There was “contact tracing” and
“quarantining” – very expensive measures – while people starved in their houses.
No one was allowed to distribute to them food but authorised government agents.
People waited for food but in vain.
Poor boda-boda riders who attempted to get out and scratch for
survival risked the wrath of anxious and ill-trained LDUs as well as other
security forces. I don’t want to talk about where all the “covid money”,
donated and borrowed, went because that will disrupt my present thoughts. Did
we stop the spread after locking people in their homes for months, closing
everything and going after anyone who ventured off the given guidelines? No.
That one variant is more dangerous than the other matters
little. What is important is the capacity to deal with Covid-19, regardless of
the variant. Football fans in Europe are back in their stadia. We in Uganda and
other poor countries watched in envy on our screens as mask-less Europeans
filled their stadia during the recent UEFA EURO-2020. They are back to active
living while lockdowns are pushing us closer to our graveyards each passing day.
Why? Because instead of solving problems our way, we often want to solve them
their way, and we eventually fail.
One of the biggest problems we have, and this has been
alluded to by so many people, is the so-called elite class. Their poor parents
sacrificed everything they had to see them through school with the hope that
they would bring prosperity to their families and communities. But most of
these are either swimming in corruption or are victims of denial and fear.
Those who seat in boardrooms can’t boldly tell their bosses
the truth. They are only told what to do and how to do it, even when they are more
learned and better positioned to advise the bosses. The other group debates on
social media and that is all. The plain truth is that Ugandan leaders have bungled
properly in managing the pandemic and succeeded very well in torturing their
citizens into further fear and submission.
Let’s have a flashback. On May 29, Gen. Museveni addressed
the nation and told those upcountry to avoid Kampala and Wakiso where Covid-19
was on the surge. If his government had capacity at that time to handle the
infected, take care of the sick and provide food for the poor city dwellers, they
would have locked those hot zones in time, just as it has been happening in
other countries.
Museveni returned on June 6 and ordered a lockdown for 42
days but gave learners four days to travel back to their homes. This was also
an indirect message to those who starved in urban areas, especially in Kampala and
Wakiso, during the previous lockdown to run to their villages before those four
days elapsed. It was an admission that the government had no capacity to deal
with the sick or those that would need food support. People had to be left on
their own, but authority and guns had to come out to show them that someone was
still in charge of the country.
Returning students and fearful urban dwellers scattered the
virus across the country. Death immediately spiralled. Dead bodies were
everywhere. In the rural area where the lockdown found me, the elderly were quickly
signing out while other bodies were being brought in mainly from Kampala and
Wakiso. By the time he returned on June 18 to order a harder lockdown for 42
days, the situation was completely out of control.
We did not stop going to burial sites as the president had
ordered. Those who died from our villages we wrapped and buried in our own
usual way, accept with more urgency. Bodies from elsewhere were being brought
in in a especial way by strange people. We had to stand a distance as men in white
performed their rituals and sunk into the ground our loved ones.
Every serious or critical case of illness that left our
villages and reached a major hospital was covid-ised
(diagnosed as COVID-19 as if other diseases had vanished). Hospitals,
ambulances, funeral service companies went into a bonanza. The murmurs in our
community were about the government stealing from its people even during hard
times such as the death of a loved one – the bills for “covid corpses” were beyond
imagination. We kept our sick and treated them from home. I am very sure this
has happened everywhere in Uganda.
No one should blame us because the healthcare system in
Uganda is badly wanting. Infrastructure, supplies and human resource are all
insufficient. When it comes to managing Covid-19 the story is even worse. At
the national level, for example, Museveni ordered the purchase of 42000
hospital beds for treating Covid-19 patients but a year later, upon the
president’s grilling, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Diana
Atwine, reported that they had installed only 3000 beds. She still holds her
office!
At the local level, again another example, our nearest
government health centre has been diagnosing any patient who visits it from a
distance and throwing tablets at them. They don’t allow them to get anywhere
close to the entrance. The poor nurses neither have the right clothing to wear
during this pandemic nor the capacity to test for covid-19.
Meanwhile, here we continue to socialise even in the evening
over a drink. But we have enough discipline to wash our hands and social
distance. We even drive our cars and use our boda-boda transport as before. The
case is not different in most parts of Uganda. It is mainly Kampala and Wakiso
suffering the violence and extortion of security forces.
Using the gun only allows the gun wielder to extort money
from the public but does not stop the spread of the virus. What we need to do
is to allow people to manage the pandemic by themselves, within their
respective communities, during transit, and during interactions with other
communities.
Let us tell everyone that the government is not responsible
for their lives. This does not sound politically interesting but it should
work. It will allow communities to educate and remind themselves about their
responsibility to protect themselves, about the dangers of not following the
given standard operating procedures. Let them police themselves on wearing
masks, sanitising and keeping social distance – be it in the market, church or during
a village gathering.
Let people manage the pandemic themselves.
The writer is a Science Journalist and the Head of Research, National
Unity Platform (NUP).