Lockdowns don’t work: The alarming side effects and why homegrown solutions are key
On Friday 27th of March, President Mnangagwa announced Zimbabwe would be joining the majority of the world in enforcing a nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus aka COVID-19. We are now almost at the end of the 21-day lockdown, our cases have risen to 23, and a tough decision has to be made on whether we continue with the lockdown to save lives or lift it to save livelihoods. In an earlier piece, I reviewed why the initial lockdown was necessary and efforts being made by both government and its people to fight the pandemic. You can read it here
In this article, I pose the argument of how the lockdown if extended might be more harmful than helpful. In this regard, we examine next steps following the end of the 21-day lockdown, looking at the effects of extending the lockdown and its possible alternatives.
Lockdown: Protection or Imprisonment?
While controversial the lockdown has been largely embraced by the populace, mainly because people understood the negative effects of the coronavirus and saw this measure as protect against a deadly pandemic. However, since then people have slowly started to break the rules, with the government itself rewriting its own rules, adding more companies to the exemption list of “essential services”, re-opening Mbare musika with little to no regulations and continuing to holding daily physical meetings and briefings.
It’s not that the Zimbabwean people are rebellious but people are slowly starting to realise that the copy-paste solution from the western world won’t work in Zimbabwe. For starters, our economy is highly informal, with about 60–90% of the population being informally employed. Under lockdown rules, these people cannot make a living, yet they still need to buy food and pay rentals. Government has proposed a ZWL 600 million package for the vulnerable, translating to a miserly ZWL 200 per person/month which is not enough to buy groceries for a week even using conservative estimates.
A recent report by the World Bank forecasts a looming recession in Sub-Saharan Africa, shifting growth for the region from 2.4% down to between -2.1% and -5.1%. This sharp fall in growth due to COVID-19 is estimated to cost in the region of $37 billion to $79 billion in output losses for 2020 alone. These losses will have effects across the board including tourism which will see travels dwindling even after the pandemic is gone, trade and value chain disruption as lockdown restriction will make it harder to move goods around, reduced remittances and business disruption caused by lockdown measures.
With this in mind, it is even more clear that whatever measures are taken in the fight against COVID-19 need not only look at protecting people’s lives but their livelihoods as well.
An Impractical Application- A case for devolution
A growing argument against nationwide lockdown with strict confinement in Africa is that it is not proportional to the number of cases encountered. While some western countries are experiencing 1000 cases per day, the majority of Africa countries are still well below 500 cases since the start of the pandemic. The ones most affected so far are larger cities which attract foreign visitors either due to tourism or business. Small cities and rural areas remain coronavirus free.
For example in Zimbabwe, cases have only been experienced in Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, the country’s two largest cities and the third a frequent tourist destination. Smaller towns, although still unaffected by the virus, have had to also join the lockdown, despite them comprising of smaller businesses(SMEs) which are not likely to survive the effects of the lockdown.
In light of this, a lot of people argue that lockdowns should take varying levels of intensity depending on the number of cases and whether or not that area has experienced any cases or not. With proper devolution, cities should be tasked with coming up with their own interventions against the novel coronavirus. Cities with a high number of cases should be closed off only permitting for essential services to operate, while cities with no cases should be allowed to operate with precautions being taken to avoid the spread of the disease, as well as agility in dealing with any cases that might occur.
However, for this to work a comprehensive system for mass testing and contact tracking has to be in place. Any new cases of the virus have to be detected fast enough to reduce its transmission and allow for escalation of lockdown measures depending on the spread in that particular region.
The Golden Opportunity: Unlocking Local Industry
Zimbabwe is a heavy import dependant country, importing an excess of things its own crippled industries could produce if probably capacitated. For years local industries have lobbied the government to put in place controls to reduce imports to give local industry a fighting chance against a well-established external industry offering cheaper imports. This gave birth to SI 64 of 2016 and SI 122 of 2017, all with different controls to support local brands but ultimately failing for one reason or another.
While COVID-19 has presented a lot of problems, the current situation presents a golden opportunity to revive the local industry. With borders closed, imports are expected to fall, with studies projecting a decline of as much as 25% during the coronavirus period. With this unsatisfied demand in the market, the government has a chance to re-open the local industries, albeit with restriction to minimize the spread of COVID-19, essentially creating jobs and reducing the effects of the looming recession.
This re-opening could start with strategic businesses which can help aid in the fight against the pandemic, such as the manufacturing and textiles industries to help produce PPEs for essential services. Former textile giants like David Whitehead Limited (DWTL), whose recapitalization has been on the cards for years now, could finally be revived and aid in the fight against corona and its effects.
…
While a lot of voices are adamant that complete lockdowns are not the way to go, there is great unity in the belief that completely unlocking only opens us up to greater dangers. The Zimbabwean populace is densely populated in urban areas, often having an individual household sustaining 2 or 3 families, with poor access to clean water and sanitation facilities and reduced access to health care. Completely removing the lockdown and proceeding normally would only increase the spread of the virus, overburdening an already struggling healthcare system. Granted the lockdown is proving unsustainable and hurting the vulnerable, it is now up to Zimbabwe to come up with a homegrown solution which while saving lives, also protects their livelihoods. A solution indicative of the low number of cases, but also taking account of the poor health institutions and slow pace of testing and contact tracing. A homegrown solution to cater to its fragility.
