Blantyre, May 22 — This week, two prominent Malawian musicians have put up posters advertising their coming shows. In a normal situation, no eyebrows would have been raised, only that this is not normal. Not only has the president of the country banned public gatherings and by extension, obviously musical shows. But the artists are asking: “If the politicians are mobilizing people for public rallies, why not us?”
When the first case of COVID-19 was discovered in the southeastern Afrikan nation in early April, the government immediately went to work. The president declared the pandemic a national disaster and announced the closure of schools, banned public gatherings of more than 100 people, and banned foreign nationals from countries affected by the Coronavirus from entering the country. Returning Malawians from the affected countries have been subject to self or institutional quarantine.
But what surprised many people including health experts was during the presentation of presidential nomination papers by both the opposing and ruling party candidates. Thousands of people accompanied the candidates and while the candidates were able to observe social distancing and wearing masks, the supporters did not. They rubbed shoulder to shoulder in the streets as they accompanied their favorite candidates. No candidate has spoken out against this practice.
What has followed are series of rallies by the leaders who have ramped up campaign ahead of the July fresh election. Malawi is set to have elections either in June or early July after the court annulled the 2019 May election due to irregularities.
According to Climate Tracker Africa, Malawi has now just over 70 cases. But the pandemic has come at a historic moment in which government trust is low and all political parties have one eye on the July elections.
Maziko Matemba, a health activist described the trend as regrettable and fears the landlocked country may soon see a sharp rise in cases ‘most likely by next month.’
“I thought that people will innovate and come up with new strategy because the current strategy is so dangerous to COVID-19. Ministry of health will have more problems in containing it because our health system is so vulnerable. In absence of strategies, this is dangerous because we’re likely to have more cases than we can manage,” Matemba told Ubuntu Times in a phone interview.
Matemba said that despite all the political leaders announcing earlier they had a strategy for doing their campaigns not to disrupt the COVID-19 measures, but what is coming out clear is that they don’t have new strategy but rather ‘they are using the same old ones which are problematic because it poses danger of COVID-19.’
He said that even United States of America which is also heading for election, the mode of campaign is different from that being practiced in the country. Malawi may not be like the USA, he said, but he urged the leaders to act differently.
“We know that people already did their campaign because this is just a rerun. So you can’t behave like you are telling people different things,” he said.
As another way of combating the virus, President Peter Mutharika had put in place a task force to provide policy and guidelines during the pandemic.
“When we had presidential taskforce, the rationale was things will be different but things are the same,” Matemba said noting that things have not changed.
“So far, we’re already or close to the peak period of the pandemic since it was discovered in April but because of the measures that the ministry had in place, like testing people who traveled, the country has seen fewer cases and mortalities but with what’s happening now, I am afraid we might have a dangerous situation,” he added.
At first, most of the cases of the Coronavirus were detected in those who had traveled from countries like India and the United Kingdom but some newer cases are now being locally transmitted raising more fears the current campaign will further spread the virus.
“We now have 42 local transmissions which mean we’ve started infecting each other. If we look closely, the local transmission is probably happening because of the same less travel restrictions to control people doing business as usual. Another sad thing about what’s happening now is that the same campaign team or managers are going across the country and that’s transferring the transmission assuming one team member has the infection,” Matemba observed.
Globally, some countries have started easing restrictions and although Afrikan countries are not as much infected as their western counterparts, fragile health systems on the continent raise fears that the pandemic will be more devastating.
In Malawi for instance, thousands of health workers have been holding protests to force the government to address their concerns including massive shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs). And the opposition has also condemned government approach in addressing the pandemic saying the government has politicized it ahead of the fresh elections.
Commenting on this Ernest Thindwa, a political science lecturer at Malawi’s Chancellor College, the current political atmosphere in the country has informed both the government’s approach to the pandemic and the backlash it has provoked.
“Malawi is now a much-divided nation on the basis of politics and the president should have known that,” he says. “The ruling party has a narrow mandate and much of the mandate, in my view, is with the opposition.”
Both the ruling and opposition refused to comment for this story why their parties are holding mass rallies amid the pandemic.
But the ministry of health principal secretary is quoted by the media saying the rallies defeat the fight against the coronavirus fight.
“As a ministry, we are really concerned with the gathering of people by political leaders. We have seen huge gathering, this would defeat the whole battle against coronavirus. This is against the global fight against the COVID-19,”
The Health Minister Jappie Mhango also reportedly spoke against the campaign.
“Elections or not, we need people and we cannot be sending them to the grave because we want to win the election. We’re being careless. If the leaders themselves cannot even observe social distancing, who will be telling people about the seriousness of the pandemic?”
As vendors, who were chased from the streets a while ago start going back into the streets and popular artists who are held in high regard start to mobilize people for shows because of the politicians conduct, it begs the question who will give direction and act as role models during this pandemic.