{"id":9508,"date":"2020-04-14T01:32:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T01:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=9508"},"modified":"2020-04-14T01:32:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T01:32:42","slug":"african-governments-and-covid-19-prevention-hypocrisy-and-irresponsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2020\/04\/14\/african-governments-and-covid-19-prevention-hypocrisy-and-irresponsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"African Governments and COVID-19 Prevention: Hypocrisy and Irresponsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 5, 2020
\n<\/em>
\nTo start talking about prevention on the African continent, we must state a fact that overlaps everything and anything that is discussed.\u00a0The most basic preventive measure and what has become a real slogan before the pandemic, washing hands, is already a requirement that may sound absurd to the ears of most Africans, given that data from the United Nations and the African Union find that in sub-Saharan Africa (that is, below the border established by the Sahara Desert and which corresponds to 85% of the continent\u2019s territory), 63% of the population have not access to tap water.<\/em>
\nBy: Wilson Hon\u00f3rio da Silva, of the PSTU National Training Secretariat\u00a0<\/strong>
\nThat said, reading official press releases, mainly between February and mid-March, it is possible to find numerous diversified references to prevention measures proposed by different governments.
\nAround March 17, for example, Mauritania imposed a mandatory curfew and closed cafes and restaurants; Nigeria closed schools and imposed a limit on religious events; Egypt banned large concentrations in public spaces and closed all educational centers and South Africa began to create similar restrictions, mainly prohibiting crowding in bars and leisure places.
\nAs from the 19th, many countries started to suspend cultural, sporting events or those gathering more than 100 people (including religious cults) and, a few, started to adopt policies of confinement of the population.
\nBut even before the numbers started to soar daily, especially from the 20th, many experts also warned of the ineffectiveness or sheer formality of much of what was being done.\u00a0Mainly because, at that time, most countries prioritized the closing of their borders (mainly international flights), based on the fact that about 80% of the confirmed cases were foreigners or people who had returned to the country.
\nAs an example, on March 16, the South African government decreed the \u201cState of Disaster\u201d, determining that citizens of South Korea, countries in Europe and of USA would need to get visas to enter the country and canceled visas already granted to eight thousand travelers from China and Iran. In the same week, Algeria suspended sea and air routes with Europe;\u00a0Morocco did the same with all international flights;\u00a0while Liberia has banned visitors from countries where there are more than 200 cases of coronavirus, the same done by Kenya if there is at least one case.
\nThe worst mistake and what explains the speedy spread of the disease is not adopting (in practically any country) distancing measures, social isolation or confinement.\u00a0In this sense, the most serious and regrettable example is South Africa, which only took these measures on March 27, when the reported cases had reached one thousand.
\nThe pandemic and the virus of Chinese capitalism in Africa<\/strong>
\nAs can be seen today, the closure of borders, although necessary, did not prevent the virus from infecting.\u00a0And, by the way, by being the only measure taken, it sent a completely wrong message to the African population: that the coronavirus was \u201ctheir\u201d thing, having nothing to do with Africa.
\nAn idea reproduced to exhaustion on social networks and supported by \u201cfake news\u201d and unreasonable \u201ctheories\u201d, such as that the virus would not resist African temperatures and climate.\u00a0And, if that weren\u2019t enough, it still ignited xenophobia, which is already a serious problem on the continent.
\nAs is known, conservative governments around the world (Trump\u2019s and Bolsonaro\u2019s ahead) have also worked with the idea of \u200b\u200bthe \u201cforeign virus\u201d or the \u201cChinese epidemic\u201d, a racist nonsense to be rightly exposed.
\nHowever, in the case of the African continent, there is a particularity that requires us to speak of the role of the Chinese in the spread of the virus: the fact that the Asian country is today one of the main, if not the most important, economic partner of the African countries, mainly Angola, South Africa, South Sudan, Namibia, Kenya and Rwanda.
\nThis was one of the factors that Bruce Basquet, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, highlighted when he referred (Science<\/em>\u00a0magazine, on March 15) to COVID-19 as a long-armed \u201ctime bomb\u201d on African soil.
\nA thesis that had already been discussed a month earlier by epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, at Harvard University (USA), in an article in\u00a0Nature<\/em>, on February 13, that drew attention to the existing \u201cpossible transmission route\u201d built \u201cby the huge number of Chinese workers working in Africa and their travels between China and Africa,\u201d remembering that most Chinese companies traditionally employ labor from the Asian country.
\nTo get an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat we are talking about, according to a website dedicated to business in Africa with the significant name\u00a0How we made in Africa<\/em>, there were 10,000 Chinese companies in the continent in 2017 (90% of them of private capital, to the dismay of those who still believe in the litany of a \u201ccommunist China\u201d), with businesses in areas such as energy, civil construction, infrastructure, agribusiness, industry, commerce, services, and real estate.
\nAnd it is worth mentioning some examples to understand not only the dimension of the problem but also because the imperialism\u2019s puppet governments in Africa did not even think about taking more serious measures in relation to this.
\nThe mobile phones company Tecno (owned by China\u2019s Transsion Holdings) controls 40% of the telephone market in East Africa. The Sunshine Group, based in Tanzania, does business across the continent, in areas such as heavy industry, agribusiness, and transportation. Star Times, which operates in the telecommunications field, is one of the main cable TV servers, with subsidiaries in thirty countries. Bobu Africa, on the other hand, is a tourism giant that specializes in \u201cintroducing African culture to Chinese tourists,\u201d which are numbered in the hundreds of thousands each year.
\nLate and ultra-limited measures<\/strong>
\nEven when it was already evident that border closings and traffic restrictions were insufficient and cases of notification were already multiplying across the continent, there were many examples of irresponsible attitudes on the part of African governments. And one that best expresses how little Africans can expect from their governments is the infamous dictator Yoweri Museveno, who has presided over Uganda for 33 years, keeping the country (of almost 44 million inhabitants) plunged into a sea of \u200b\u200bcorruption, poverty, and unemployment.
\nAnd in this case, by the way, the similarities with Bolsonaro are scary.\u00a0Museveno is a member of a fundamentalist Christian organization (from the same branch of the Universal Kingdom of God, owned by the Brazilian Edir Macedo and, also, collateral of Israeli Zionism);\u00a0in 2019, he defended the death penalty for LGBT people and keeps the country\u2019s prisons filled with social and political activists.
\nSo it is no coincidence that Uganda\u2019s president is one of the most irresponsible speakers in relation to the pandemic among African countries.\u00a0In an interview with the newspaper\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>, on March 20, when there were no notifications of contagion (now there are already 33 cases), Atel Kagirita, appointed by the president for the fight against COVID-19, declared that the virus \u201cwill not be a big problem \u2026 if we can effectively stop local transmission\u201d, insinuating that the cases would remain restricted to those brought from abroad.
\nFaced with the inefficiency of governments, fake news proliferate<\/strong>
\nAnd it is worth remembering that, in today\u2019s world, frivolous postures by the \u201cauthorities\u201d always have a by-product that also turns into objective problems in facing the situation: the fake news.\u00a0Just to give an example, which started in South Africa but has spread across the continent, the lack of initiatives on the part of the government has caused the population to start adopting completely ineffective measures in relation to prevention.
\nFor example, WhatsApp broadcast lists were inundated with the most bizarre news, such as the one arguing that the virus is transmitted by beef, driving many to change their diet to be protected (which has skyrocketed fish consumption in many regions).\u00a0Another \u201cnews\u201d said that there was no need to worry because \u201ca Palestinian scientist had already discovered the corona vaccine\u201d.\u00a0And one of the worst, shared by millions, presented an unusual healing recipe: \u201cCorona can be cured by boiling eight tablespoons of garlic in six cups of water.\u201d
\nAs a result of fear and despair in the face of what was seen around the world, fake news cannot be seen as examples of \u201cpopular ignorance\u201d or anything like that.\u00a0They are unfortunate reflections of the inertia, not to mention complete levity, of governments like in Uganda, which is far from being an isolated case.\u00a0And the worst is that levity and neglect with the people will probably continue even when treatment is necessary.
\nThe worst is yet to come<\/strong>
\nIn\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0March 20 interview, the top Ugandan official in charge of pandemic response was even more \u201coptimistic\u201d facing the outbreak, stating that the government \u201cdoesn\u2019t envisage having many cases [needing critical care] because we are putting all our efforts on prevention.\u201d
\nA statement that according to experts from the country itself is completely incompatible with reality, although Uganda, in fact, as Kagirita claimed, has experienced other epidemics. Ebola\u2019s toll was 11 death and 28,000 infected in its last outbreak between 2014 and 2016.
\nExperience aside, Prof Pauline Byakika, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences, was emphatic: \u201conce the [coronavirus] gets here, was going to spread very fast,\u201d due to of what she calls the \u201csocial environment\u201d in most homes, due to poor hygiene and ventilation conditions: \u201cThey are about five or six people in a house with one or two windows.\u00a0Before you know it the whole household is going to be sick.\u201d
\nAlso ignoring this reality, Uganda\u2019s Minister of Health, Janet Ruth Aceng, said she was confident with the possibility of addressing possible problems, stating that the country has \u201cenough capacity beds, some ICU units and ventilation to handle a possible outbreak\u201d. Another lie. It is unavoidable to know that the Ugandan government is relying primarily on the services of the National Reference Hospital in Mulago, which has 1,500 beds but only 60 ICU beds.
\nUganda, unfortunately, is not an isolated case on the continent.\u00a0Neither in relation to carelessness when there were still few notifications nor to how African governments are preparing to face the pandemic, now that its spread is unquestionable.
\nBut the irresponsibility of local governments regarding the pandemic is far from being limited to what has (or has not) been done in recent weeks.\u00a0The biggest problem is that Africans, as highlighted in the aforementioned\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0article, will face the pandemic with far more unfavorable conditions than the rest of the world, including Brazil.
\nNot because, as racists imply, \u201cin Africa it is like that.\u201d But simply because, as we have seen, the clutches of capitalism there have always been particularly sharp and perverse, leaving deep marks and open wounds on the continent.\u00a0Something particularly visible is its health system.
\nAnd it is exactly these open wounds that make Africa an environment in which the coronavirus not only finds more favorable conditions to spread but also to cause more lethal and catastrophic effects.
\n\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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