On lockdown, Uhuru is right and wrong

The decision by President Uhuru Kenyatta to impose containment measures in the five counties of Nairobi, Machakos, Kiambu, Kajiado and Nakuru has been met with anger and indignation by several Kenyans citing its negative impacts on their lives and livelihoods.

A video of a religious leader astigating the President for the decision and accusing him and the political class of having disobeyed past measures leading to the current situation went viral.

To be fair to the President, by the time he gave the directives the situation was grim. The positivity rate had been climbing steadily in the past few weeks and hospitals too had run out of ICU bed space.

There were media reports of patients being required to deposit hundreds of thousands of shillings to book an ICU bed and that even then one had to wait until a patient was either discharged or passed.

As the Head of State, whose primary responsibility is to protect the lives of all Kenyans, the President had to act.

A few days before he made the announcement the positivity rate in Nairobi was above 50 percent, meaning one out of every two people tested in the city had Covid. Was he to wait until everybody got infected?

Over the past year, the President has demonstrated that on the fight against the virus he would be led by science. We can blame him and his government for many missteps since 2013, but on the pandemic he has led from the front and by that alone helped prevent a catastrophe in the country.

The third wave, from the trends, promises to be more vicious than the past. Tough measures were therefore called for.

The President’s actions were neither reckless nor uninformed. In this instance, leadership calls for tough choices.

But the President was damned if he acted, damned if didn’t. The one area that requires a rethink is livelihoods, with a particular focus on small businesses.

For businesses, 2020 was a bad year. Many small operations folded up. The bigger ones, while still operating, made huge losses. The hospitality and tourism industry was the worst hit.

Private school operators too suffered immensely. The informal traders, including the Mama Mboga and the small taxi operators, lost livelihoods.

They were just starting to get back to their feet when the President’s directives came. The directives while intended to save lives, may just contribute to some of them losing theirs due to a lack of a livelihood.

It is to this group that the President must pay attention to. By not speaking to them and addressing their plight in his last speech, he made a mistake. Leadership must also be about empathy.

While the past speeches have dealt with the economy and health in equal measure, this time it was all lives and no livelihoods. Maybe like several of us, the President was reacting to the magnitude of the emerging health crisis.

Even as one hopes that the wave will be contained soon, a week is already a long time. By the time the measures are either lifted or relaxed, irreparable damage will have been done. It is, therefore, urgent that the President and his team come up with short-term economic relief to accompany the containment measures issued a few days ago.

Last year, for example, private schools were promised a fund to help cushion them from the loss. It never materialised. Such help is urgently needed, and the government must honour the promise.

It is understandable that the country is in a bad economic shape and the fiscal wriggle room is almost non-existent. But that is why leadership is elected so that they can think and come up with innovative solutions during periods such as this.

In addition, the vaccine strategy is urgent. The first batch was not strategically rolled out for weeks. When it the rollout picked up, shortages started being reported in a matter of days, again a demonstration of lack of a proper plan.

It is important that some of these missteps be addressed.