From denial to brutal lockdown: How Africa’s response to ‘rich man’s’ disease has evolved  

As cases soar and the virus spreads across the continent, even the breeziest African leaders have been forced into drastic action

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At first, the inclination of some African leaders was to shrug it all off. The coronavirus epidemic was swirling though the northern hemisphere, but Africa, mercifully, had mostly been spared.

Perhaps it was the climate or something in the genes, politicians whispered. Others looked to the Heavens. Burundi was coronavirus free, the president’s spokesman said, because it put “God first”. 

Zimbabwe was exempt, its defence minister reckoned, because the disease was divine retribution against the West for imposing sanctions on her government.

As long as Africans remained faithful, God’s mercy would continue to shine on them, John Magufuli, Tanzania’s president, told his people. Crowd into the churches, he urged them, take communion: the virus cannot survive in the Body of Christ.

Homeless men wait for an NGO food handout at the informal settlement called 'Marikana' on day-8 of the 21 day national lockdown following President Cyril Ramaphosa declaration of a National Disaster as a result of Covid-19 Coronavirus, in Pretoria, South Africa
Homeless men wait for an NGO food handout at a settlement in Pretoria on day eight of the 21-day national lockdown Credit: KIM LUDBROOK/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 

Not all African leaders were quite so insouciant as to propose transubstantiation as a cure for Covid-19. In some countries, particularly those with experience of recent Ebola epidemics, the response was swift. Uganda imposed a partial closure of its airspace even before it had recorded its first confirmed case.

But in recent weeks, as the number of cases has soared and the virus has spread across the continent – including Burundi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania – even the breeziest African leaders have been forced into drastic action. 

More than two-thirds of African states have imposed restrictions on movement, while 17 have enforced total or partial lockdowns.

It is not hard to see why minds have been changed. 

The coronavirus pandemic may have reached Africa later, perhaps because the continent accounts for just two per cent of global air travel. But the number of cases is now soaring, standing at more than 9,000 by Sunday evening, and data mapping suggests that the continent is now on the same infection trajectory as Italy or Spain.

“Case numbers are increasing exponentially in the African region,” said Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s Africa director.

“It took 16 days from the first confirmed case in the region to reach 100 cases. It took a further 10 days to reach the first thousand. Three days after this, there were 2,000 cases, and two days later we were at 3,000.”

The reality could be even grimmer, public health experts say, given the level of under-testing everywhere on the continent with the exception of South Africa.

Yet as urgent as the situation is rapidly becoming, many question whether lockdowns can work as well in Africa as in Europe, where richer publics are generally more willing to cooperate with their police forces in enforcing such measures.

By contrast, African security services often exist less to serve the people than to protect the elite from them – and are hated as a result.

There have already been examples of abuse across the continent. In Kenya, police last week shot dead a 13-year-old boy playing on his balcony 20 minutes after the beginning of the nightly dusk-to-dawn curfew. 

He was not the only fatality. Activists and local media report that the Kenyan police have killed at least three other people, including a motorcycle taxi driver allegedly beaten to death after he broke the curfew to take a woman in labour to hospital. Even doctors, nurses and others working in sectors supposed to be exempt from the curfew say they have been assaulted by policemen with little interest in the rules.

A government official uses a whip to attempt to disperse civilians who gathered to access relief food rations, amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Nairobi
A government official uses a whip to attempt to disperse civilians who gathered to access relief food rations, amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus in Nairobi Credit: Reuters

It is not just Kenya. Police have shot lockdown breakers in Uganda, while five policemen were arrested in Rwanda – where there have also been fatalities – on suspicion of beating up men in their houses and raping their wives.

Even in South Africa, which has won praise for the efficiency of its coronavirus response, police and soldiers have been filmed caning and humiliating civilians. One man caught on a beer run was allegedly beaten to death with a hammer by police in Cape Town.

There are already signs of a backlash. On Thursday, a groups of youths attacked soldiers in southern Nigeria after they reportedly shot dead a man who had broken the lockdown to buy medicine for his pregnant fiancée.

It is not the risk of police brutality stoking social unrest that is worrying Africa watchers, however. Lockdowns in the West are only feasible because so many people can work from home while their governments have launched huge rescue packages to protect the economy and guarantee incomes.

No such safety nets exist in most African states, raising questions about the wisdom of copying and pasting western lockdowns.

More than 80 per cent of adult Africans work in the informal sector, eking out a living as petty traders, self-employed artisans or tillers of the soil. Most feed their families in the evening with whatever money they earned during the day.

Preventing people from working on a continent where 200m are already undernourished, according to the charity Action Against Hunger, puts them on a pathway to starvation.

On the streets of Mathare, a slum on the eastern fringes of Nairobi where almost no-one has access to running water and social distancing is nigh on impossible, resentment is mounting.

“If you are a middle-class Kenyan with a fully stocked fridge and live-in staff, it is easy to quarantine,” said Elijah Wanjala, who worked as a waiter until he lost his job a fortnight ago after restaurants were forced to close.

“But I live in one room with my wife and five children and I have no money for food. What do I do? This is a disease that affects rich people. But it is poor people like us who are being made to pay the price.”

Hunger and finances aside, health professionals are warning that even if lockdowns slow the spread of the virus, it will almost be impossible to prevent limited the continent’s limited critical care capacity from being rapidly overwhelmed.

Economists in Kenya calculate that the country’s intensive care units will no longer be able to cope once the number of confirmed coronavirus cases exceeds 2,000. As of Saturday, Kenya had 126 confirmed cases.

Even more worryingly, for every life that might be saved by an anti-coronavirus lockdown, more could be lost to other diseases.

Doctors warn that some people are too scared of the police to venture out to buy life-saving medicines or when they become seriously ill.

In Zimbabwe, where a quarter of people need food aid after a severe drought last year, a 21-day lockdown is placing additional strain on a creaking health system weakened by decades of government misrule.

“Zimbabwe does not have the infrastructure to manage this,” a public sector medical specialist in the capital Harare said. “We fear that those malaria will not be treated now and that the large number of people with HIV/Aids will not get their antiretrovirals.

African governments are therefore in a bind. While there are powerful arguments to avoid lockdowns, the consequences of doing nothing could be devastating.

Data modelling by the Covid-19 response team at Imperial College estimates that nearly 2.5m Africans will die without any mitigation measures.

But with enforced social distancing, the team reckons that – even with Africa’s limited medical resources – fatalities could be cut to 298,000. Yet not everyone is sure that the cost, financial or in human terms, will be worth it.

“We are worried the lockdown will kill more people than coronavirus,” the medical specialist in Harare said.

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