{UAH} Constructive anger! Yes, that is what Africa needs to beat Covid
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7:34 AM |
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IN SUMMARY
- When the coronavirus broke out, rich societies started hoarding some essential supplies for fighting the outbreak.
- Some poor societies started developing their own fighting capabilities and a few months down the road, Uganda has 100 plus companies manufacturing sanitisers, whose quality gets better by the day.
President Yoweri Museveni is an angry man. He is not worried; he is angry, and in fighting mood.
Last week he delivered the annual State of the Nation Address and as expected, dwelt heavily on the impact of and preparedness for the Covid-19 effects — now called the new normal.
When the coronavirus broke out, rich societies started hoarding some essential supplies for fighting the outbreak. Some poor societies started developing their own fighting capabilities and a few months down the road, Uganda has 100 plus companies manufacturing sanitisers, whose quality gets better by the day.
Many are making face masks and the Uganda National Bureau of Standards is very strict over which of the scores of manufacturers should be certified to get onto the market.
And guess what, Makerere University with the government's Kiira Motors Corporation have produced a medical ventilator called Bulamu (life) for enabling patients in Intensive Care Units to breathe.
The Ugandan ventilator costs a tenth of the world market price for medical ventilators. Shortage of these machines has caused thousands of deaths in developed countries since the outbreak of covid-19.
"They thought we would die," Museveni said in a voice dripping with vengeance. "But we are not maggots!"
The angry Museveni went ahead to swear that not only will the African survive but will also use this Covid epoch to thrive.
"We are not maggots!" the president repeated.
Indeed, as the president spoke early June, half a year since Covid-19 started in China, a country with which Uganda has very intense — interaction — not a single person had died of the disease!
"We are not maggots!" he said a third time.
Anybody who had lived in a village with no flush toilets knows where the place of maggots is. Not only do the maggots stay down there, they also accept whatever is dumped on them. When a man repeatedly mentions maggots in a national address that is attentively being listened to by all diplomats accredited to the country, you have an idea how he feels about those he accuses of treating his people like maggots.
Museveni went ahead to swear that as long as he is in charge of Uganda, not a speck of uranium will ever be exported from the country "for others to make cheap electricity" with it, insisting that it is better to let it stay in the ground. This brings to mind Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's resolve not to export raw gold from Tanzania, until such a time as when the Tanzanians would make the final products that come from gold.
And on the maggoty continues in different African countries.
President Museveni's anger is constructive anger, unlike bad anger from desperation which is destructive. Desperate anger is the type that makes a school kid spill ink of the nice dress of a smarter classmate. But a kid with constructive anger makes efforts to become smarter than the smart kid.
That is the type of anger Africans need right now. It is the anger that Covid-19 has given Africa. If you remember, some clever epidemiologists from the rich countries projected confidently early March that Africa would have 500,000 cases of Covid-19 by May.
But African leaders moved quickly to take measures to cut the transmission of the virus. May came and Africans were this time proud for delivering below expectation, far below. We gave the world only a tenth (50,000) of what they expected from us — 500,000.
The realisation that this Covid-19 thing is beatable spurred us into believing in ourselves, our ability to check the virus even better than the richer, technologically advanced societies.
It is this realisation and proof that makes a man like Museveni angry at those who regard his society as lowly. It makes you even look more closely at the death rate of diagnosed patients which is about six per cent worldwide and a scary 16 per cent for Belgium, and zero in Uganda.
And the objectivity of the rich nations becomes questionable as Belgians accuse others of under-reporting their Covid deaths.
Belgium says while it counts all coronavirus deaths, other developed countries do not count those who die of Covid-19 outside hospitals in nursing homes; homes for the elderly.
We need constructive anger.
Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:buwembo@gmail.com
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