African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Covid-19Kenya
Home›Covid-19›Kenya: We cannot police ourselves out of the pandemic

Kenya: We cannot police ourselves out of the pandemic

By Kamau Wairuri
June 3, 2020
2815
7
An empty street in Nairobi, Kenya, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: World Bank/Sambrian Mbaabu.

From early on, the government treated COVID-19 as a law enforcement rather than public health issue. It has a long way to go to rebuild trust.

An empty street in Nairobi, Kenya, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: World Bank/Sambrian Mbaabu.

An empty street in Nairobi, Kenya, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: World Bank/Sambrian Mbaabu.

Read all our COVID-19 coverage 

After recording its first case COVD-19 on 13 March, Kenya could have taken one of two options. The first was to treat the introduction of the highly infectious disease as a public health crisis. This would have involved rapidly increasing testing, educating people on how to reduce the risk of transmission, and diverting resources to facilitate this new behaviour.

Instead, the Kenyan government followed a different approach. Rather than seeing the coronavirus as a public health challenge, much of its response suggests that it understood it primarily as a law enforcement matter. In this frame, the enemy was not the virus but the “undisciplined citizen”.

This could be seen from the early on in the interventions. On 25 March, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a nationwide curfew from 7pm to 5 am. Two days later, when the curfew took effect, police brutalised citizens as they tried to make their way home. Evidently, they saw their job to be “enforcing the law” rather than “facilitating compliance”. The case of Amina Mutio, a female police officer pictured helping vulnerable people get home, was the exception that proved the rule.

Following this violence, President Kenyatta apologised and the government appealed to employers to let workers leave work by 4pm. Despite this, the heavy-handed approach continued. The police have injured many Kenyan citizens and have reportedly killed at least six people while enforcing the lockdown, including 13-year-old Yassin Hussein Moyo. Two men are also reported to have died as they ran from police to avoid arrest for not wearing masks: one jumped off a bridge; the other jumped into a pond and drowned.

The government’s attitude is also apparent from its communications. In its official briefings, it has often made supposed rule-breakers the focus of its announcements. Senior officials, led by the president, have repeatedly castigated people for their “indiscipline”, implicitly blaming the continued spread of the virus on individual citizens rather than the government’s mishandling of the crisis.

At one point the government’s health and law enforcement measures became intertwined in a particularly counter-productive way. To compel people to abide by the lockdown, the government said that those found contravening the measures would be assumed to have interacted with infected persons and be sent to state quarantine centres for 14 days for which they would have to foot the bill themselves. Quarantine went from being a public health imperative to a punishment.

Furthermore, this policy may have even contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Some people are believed to have become infected at the centres, while some inmates escaped, potentially spreading the disease to surrounding communities. The government has acknowledged that it cannot trace many people who have tested positive.

Rebuilding trust

Fortunately, the Kenyan government has shifted its approach more recently and has focused on public health measures. Crucially, it has increased testing, though it still lags well behind the likes of South Africa and Ghana. More testing will enable more informed and targeted measures. For instance, it has now allowed eateries to reopen on condition that they test staff regularly and permitted truck drivers from Somalia and Tanzania to enter Kenya only if they test negative.

Unfortunately, this change of focus has not always gone as far as necessary. When the government rolled out mass testing in areas believed to be highly affected in early-May, for example, many people were reluctant to cooperate due to fear of the high costs they would have to pay if they were found positive and then placed in mandatory quarantine. By the time the government announced it was waiving the fees, the damage had been done.

Even now, as the government appeals to people to undergo voluntary testing, many are afraid they may be forced to stay in – and possibly subject their families – to the poor conditions in quarantine facilities. This may explain why many COVID-19 deaths in Kenya are occurring at home.

At the time of writing, Kenya has recorded 2,093 cases and 71 deaths. The number of cases continues to rise and officials project that the outbreak will peak in August or September. If the government is to be successful in reducing the number of deaths and the damage caused by the pandemic, it will need to intensify its public health measures. But to do this, it will first need to rebuild the trust with citizens that it lost through its early actions.

The government will need to demonstrate a commitment to fighting the virus with the people, rather than fighting the people. Renewing this sense of legitimacy will take time and may require the government to partner with, and listen to, the civil society organisations and mutual aid groups that have built trust with citizens over the last few months, as the government has lost it. If the police are to have a role, meanwhile, it will be to facilitate public health efforts. After all, what we have learnt so far is that we cannot police ourselves out of a pandemic.


 

Previous Article

Malawi: Campaigning during COVID-19 doesn’t have to ...

Next Article

An open letter from African writers: #BlackLivesMatter

mm

Kamau Wairuri

Kamau Wairuri is a Kenyan political analyst who writes on matters of politics, security and justice. He is currently a PhD Candidate in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

7 comments

  1. Jester 5 June, 2020 at 13:40

    This is good analysis comment Mr Kamau Wairuri on how the Kenyan government handled this Covid-19 pandemic in advising the nation. This is a certainly a health issue to be handled as such to protect the community. When and if this Covid-19 condition is identified it should always be taken as a health matter.

    Thanks for your writing on such matters.

    God bless.

    Jester T Maphisa

  2. Hassan Alhusein 6 June, 2020 at 06:29

    What the government need to do is to put more money into research. Testing and testing and testing is a useless exercise. Countries that followed that path have a follow up plan. Those found positive are advised to self quarantine and are fully supported while on a self quarantine. The government provide them with their daily necessities. Here in Kenya, their is no support whatsoever. Having said that, let us ask why the testing exercise is a useless. It is useless because if found positive, there is no approved medicine to treat and if found negative, there is no vaccine yet to protect your against future infection. That means you could be negative today and get infected tomorrow. Therefore instead of wasting money on testing kits, the government should spend it on research and (as you suggested) educating the public on how to stay safe.

  3. hydroclorizine 19 August, 2021 at 22:33

    chlorowuine https://chloroquineorigin.com/# difference between chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine

  4. Patrickvussy 27 August, 2021 at 03:18

    cialis dosage cheap cialis

  5. Patrickvussy 28 August, 2021 at 13:54

    cialis without a doctor prescription cialis without a doctor prescription

  6. hydroxychloroquineor 30 August, 2021 at 06:13

    biden hydroxychloroquine plaquenil generic name hydroxide chloroquine

  7. Patrickvussy 30 August, 2021 at 12:22

    cialis alternative cialis 20mg

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Uganda's military is engaged in Operation Shujaa in DR Congo. Credit: Credit: Rick Scavetta, U.S. Army Africa.
    Congo-KinshasaEditor's PicksPoliticsUganda

    “Total Success”? The real goals of Uganda’s Operation Shujaa in DRC

  • Politics

    Waiting for the Blue Helmets: More gloom from CAR as crisis passes 18 months – By Magnus Taylor

  • Politics

    Darfur: Necessary Knowledge for Effective Action

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Oligarchs, Oil and Obi-dients: The battle for the soul of Nigeria
  • Of cobblers, colonialism, and choices
  • Blackness, Pan-African Consciousness and Women’s Political Organising through the Magazine AWA
  • “People want to be rich overnight”: Nigeria logging abounds despite ban
  • The unaccountability of Liberia’s polluting miners

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksSociety

“Do we really need them?” Four big challenges facing African think tanks

The need for think tanks’ well-evidenced research is greater than ever today, but many are fighting – some to get heard, others just to survive. Today’s world can be a lonely ...
  • Tunisia's President Kais Saied (left) meeting with the US Defence Secretary in September 2020. Credit: DoD/Lisa Ferdinando.

    Don’t let Tunisia’s democracy slip

    By Raed Ben Maaouia
    August 30, 2021
  • Ella Baker addressing a convention in 1964.

    Thinking radically in Africa must start with political education

    By Nanjala Nyabola
    October 12, 2021
  • In 2011, mass protests led to the downfall of President Mubarak. In 2013, the military retook power in a coup. Credit: Gigi Ibrahim.

    This is how our revolution in Egypt failed. Sudan, please be warned.

    By Osama Gaweesh
    June 5, 2019
  • Don’t just vote. Mobilise. (Aka Why elections won’t change Nigeria)

    By Ayo Sogunro
    January 29, 2019

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu