Uganda Elites' fear-mongering discourses against Kyagulanyi erodes our democratic rights

FEARMONGERING

The Uganda elites have been most unfair to Hon. Kyagulanyi since he emerged as a firebrand opposition leader. They have treated Kyagulanyi condescendingly without letting up. Kyagulanyi, however, has continuously manifested himself in the total opposite of those who frame him as an elusive object of fear. The groups most vicious in their onslaught are even embedded within the enterprise opposition.

In politics, we understand the role of paid propaganda as part of the discourse production to sustain the status quo. A discourse is usually evidence-driven views, both textual and discursive that prevails in society as part of the dominant idea. These are transmitted either consciously or unconsciously to the masses to shape perspectives and decision-making in favour of those who produce it – those in power.

In the Ugandan context, “innuendo and rumours” have “replaced evidence-based” in as much as violence and impunity have replaced due process in laws. The rumours and innuendos gain legitimacy through certain individuals with power. Their sources of power could be patriarchy, crooked professionalism and experience, wealth and marital polyandrous status drawn from having regime ties and privileges.

Over time, the core arguments levelled against People Power Movement have varied and some, strange; yet unchallenged.

That Kyagulanyi’s group draws mainly from low life rascals, the “unwashed” of slums and are to be feared – as if Kyagulanyi produces slum dwellers.

Another group claimed that Kyagulanyi is violent, unpredictable and capable of derailing the rented elite conveniences under the repression – these hate to hear sentiments such as freedom or liberation.

Other groups argue that opposing Museveni’s tyranny and draconian laws equate to triggering a war – these pessimists do not realize that Hon. Kyagulanyi does not command an army or speak the language of violence.

Then there are the “Obama birthers” equivalent among desktop academics - these claim that Hon. Kyagulanyi is not academically sophisticated or experienced to lead Uganda - such groups fail to produce desktop evidence showing that high-level academics have delivered transformational corruption-free leadership anywhere in African since independence.

The non-Baganda groups argue that the People Power Movement, and now the National Unity Platform Party is a Ganda-centric ethnic consciousness whose central leadership is exclusive and hostile to non-Baganda – this group sits by and does nothing to probe up their own ethnic consciousness against misrule.

However, the most prominent of the siasa discourse emanates from the sensational propagandist, Mr Andrew Mwenda – that people power is a group of radical intolerant extremists capable of lynching anyone with whom they are disagreeable – this line disregards the main source of violence as Mr. Museveni, whose regime “crushes” any forms of organized opposition.

Of course, all of these claims are contrived and lack both substance and good intentions. Time has decomposed some of them with the failing the reputation of their proponents such as Mwenda.

Absolutely, it is not my place to speak for PPM or Mr. Kyagulanyi. However, as a righteous citizen of Uganda, it is important for me to redirect the masses away from the petty politics of fear and defending rented convenience.

I know that Mr. Museveni and group came to power with a one-way ticket and will do anything to retire in power.  Thus, exposing Uganda’s elite pretensions in this repressive environment can alleviate the fear levels.

Uganda is one of the many African countries where unconscionable elderly statemen are in charge of a very young population. These fellows are far more concerned with the hereafter than us who should concern ourselves about our future.

In generating and sustaining fear-mongering propaganda against Hon. Kyagulanyi, we collectively violated our own civic rights as citizens of Uganda with contempt and narrow the democratic space.

In sum, we are consciously digging our graves wider and deeper beneath the Museveni’s decades-long entrenched dictatorship by embracing fearmongering discourses.

END.

Of Gulu City's Illicit trades, Part 2

ILLICIT TRADES

In the first part about Gulu dames, I decried the Gulu elites’ bashing of prostitution as a viable economy. I recognized that prostitution is a blight in our societal conscience. I took exception of child prostitution and attempted to explain with many difficulties, the genesis of child prostitution as the total

breakdown of our social safety nets. Most of these maladies of society are exacerbated in the

post-conflict Acholi. 

I also paled off any pretense that Acholi that we know now, is as conservative, morally, as the Acholi we knew before the war. In this section, I guide my readers to what we should do. I start by enumerating the inevitability of societal evolution.

Far from Gulu, the other worlds have evolved spectacularly within the liberalised economic doctrine.

They have developed liberal markets where every item that money can buy, are sold. With such a

market, many of our vulnerable persons become commodities. Children become commodities,

not just for sex, but for labour, organs, research, trafficking, objects of luscious fetish, and so on.

A researcher, Kevin Bales concluded that these humans – without a proper and firm foundation

in a protective society, become disposable human beings. The children are used and recycled and

sometimes disposed of in mass graves.

An old report by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) revealed that children and

young women from East Africa, including Uganda, are being enticed by a mere plate of cooked

food and trafficked into the global line of human sex trafficking. These are serious concerns that

we should not turn into our past time gossip subjects. 

Clarity

I am not saying that prostitution is good. I am saying that it is despicable. Prostitution is a sign of

societal failures to provide equal opportunity for all. I am reiterating that prostitution is our

reality of a failed society. I am saying that by spending time lambasting the people who earn a

living as prostitutes, maybe someone should begin to understand them beyond their trade or that

identity – to look at them as daughters, parents, and citizens of value in a perverted society. 

Had it not been for COVID-19, and had it not been for the hunger associated with the quarantine

to force these women to place our leaders at “pussy point” as Bosmic Otim said, very few people

could have known that prostitution is marketable in Gulu. We now know that the demand for

prostitutes is high. We also know now that the most profitable consumers are Gulu local leaders.

A condition must exist for an event to emerge.

I am saying that these women lacked, and still lack opportunities for alternative income-

generating activities. , I am certain that we could do more for them as a society.– We could

initiate public policies that will provide a safety net for the children, make a demand for

prostitution unsavory and retrain these women into productive citizens.

Lastly, the colorful language we employ in describing prostitution is simply uncouth, violent,

dismissive, and barbaric. These people are earning a living and partaking in a sensitive sector of

the pleasure economy. They should be legalized, and their trade legitimized as work, licensed,

and therefore taxed. The taxes could be levied from designated operation chambers – brothels,

bars, stages, or hotels. 

As such, the women will no longer be called prostitutes, but dignified Sex Workers with rights

and respect like all traders and workers. This group, however, becomes of the essence for public

health, thus the necessity for licensure. Society must also be careful to discern the prostitutes

from the prostituted and sex workers. This can help in identifying the Pimps, Johns, and Madams

early on. Prostitutes do it voluntarily, independently, and are perverse. The prostituted are forced,

exploited, and often mistreated – children and disempowered rural women. The sex workers

have more rights and recognition in society because of their legal status. They could even have a

Union. It is hard to find a city in the world that has settled the issue of sex-workers, prostitution and prostituted decisively. One thing we must safeguard, however, is our people from

exploitation, human trafficking, and cruel treatment. The Bishops are allowed to disagree with

me!

End.

Evaluate the role of Political Parties in Uganda's democracy

PARTY POLITICS

I read Norbert Mao’s piece titled “Political Parties are key in democracy” in the Daily Monitor of Aug 2, 2020, that reminds us of the relevance of political parties in a pluralist democracy. Mao observes that political parties galvanizing the socio-political spheres in a polity through enforcing a set of core beliefs.

In adjoining this discussion, I emphatically assess that political parties in Uganda have been in abeyance for too long and have collectively lost their shine. Mao presides over the oldest political party in the country – the Democratic Party. His sobering recollection could, therefore, affirm that his own party’s values have faded and hard to recognise. As a seasoned lawyer and politician, Mao has a commanding knowledge and experience in party politics where he is held hostage to a turbulent party environment.  One challenge is that reinventing parties that are subsumed in a chronically repressive environment and yet strives to partake in a sham democracy willingly becomes a major contradiction.

Youths reading Mao’s article becomes doubtful if political parties in Uganda actually adhere to any core values or perform those roles, functions or responsibilities as Mao articulated. When I read the article, I struggled to delineate between Mao’s ideals and parties’ realities in the Ugandan political context.

The youthful Ugandans are acquainted with the abnormalities of parties and not their core values. Uganda has 29 registered political parties. Some are sold like pancakes to the highest bidders. Most are briefcase elements for pomp and defections. Those established and barely functioning parties are themselves war zones - places for quarrels, fights, and protracted tribal wars; or even where to rebrand for meal cards politics. Parties in opposition are known as the nexus of both physical and mental poverty.  There are parties in Uganda that have built reputations as the political uterus in which potential NRM cadres are conceived.

Ugandan Political Parties are treacherous and have become a reservoir of the politics of violent confrontations. The NRM regime has pulled out the gut material from all political parties and organizations rendering them clientele agencies. When Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi bought NUP, some people lamented that the People Power sophistication had ended. This is how people have strayed away from Parties.

Under Museveni, Parties are like bars - enclaves for political hotheads to cool off. Talk about flattening the political pressure curve! Party leaders are mostly listening post for the ruling regime, making it hard to trust any of them.

Mao needed to move beyond validating political parties and reinventing their relevance for future generations. Parties in Uganda have outgrown their usefulness. It is time for movements that are not legally bound to the repressive laws of the regime to take center stage. Parties have left spaces for robust social movements and various non-traditional formations to emerge. Ugandans should take those spaces to liberate the nation from impunity. Parties no longer command such ideological thrust and have alienated the majority of Ugandans from the democratic process. Parties are no longer repositories of trust and preferred engines for social transformation because they have not shown maturity or brought the desired change when all they do is fight for flagbearer position.

In the Ugandan context, no Political Party can survive in a political environment when it has no independent source of well managed and steady revenue. Paid party membership must have significantly declined over the decades.  Parties cannot contribute meaningfully to democracy when they are resource-constrained and operated on a non-democratic non-value basis. Thus, the sad realization about Uganda’s political parties is that they are prone to imperialism and elite class collaborations with foreign donors and exploiters.

End.

The Acholi Dames - Part 1

#AcholiDames: Part 1

Pauline Lagot and Nancy Aber have been friends from childhood. Both were children of Police Officers in Gulu. Their best memories were playing nyorio and kedu wic (weaving hair) on the verandah of holy Rosary School back in the days.

With the war raging, the two girls took a different life's path. Each going with the twirl of opportunity available at the time. Pauline went to Sacred Heart in Gulu, and Nancy went to Trinity College, Nabingo. The choice of the school reveals how deeply entrenched their families were in the Catholic faith. And, like most of their contemporaries, a Sunday mass at Holy Rosary was exhilarating.

Once separated, the two girls tried as much as possible to communicate, by writing letters, when they could. Those snail mails of the 90s were the ropes that strum them together. The Postal bus service was the most reliable means of delivering the letters from one end to the other.

Recently, Pauline found her bundle of letters from Nancy and she re-read them again. The page on which these words were inscribed, became the scene for articulating and etching a beautiful vision that would never be realized.

These letters are so detailed, the points raised with deep thought and passion, notwithstanding the overbearing girlish imaginary.  The content reveals that girls have the same, if not even better concerns and great aspirations as boys. In fact, much more than boys at their age. They reveal that young women mature early and yet their aspirations are nurtured late, leading to missed opportunities.  

One thing that the girls vowed to each other was to grow into change agents. “I want to change the world”, Nancy wrote in one letter. Pauline replies: “ I dream to work hard and own half of the world. My father should live to see my success”. No one at this time fantasized about a marriage.

And, as fate would adorn them, they had great prospects - great social support around them. Their perseverance through adolescence could be accredited fully to stability within their families. Both families were humble, modest, but intensely hovering, imposing, and regimented. There were order and accountability, respect, and a sense of forwarding thrust. No one sat on their hands or spent time kissing their teeth Infinitum.

 The disruptive and violent tide of Uganda’s 90s luckily did not rob them of their parents like their contemporaries. When their contemporaries lost relatives and guardians to HIV/AIDS or War, the girls reflected on those in their letters and found a source inspiration for self-preservation. They vowed never to flirt with a boy. Pauline writes in one of her letters: “There is this hunk of a lad. He is handsome, stubborn, hot-headed. He wants to be so bad. But I have to switch off my feelings else I will violate our commitment to the future”. Nancy responded, “hold on tight my sister, seek the guidance of Mother Theresa. These boys can wait. You know they say the beautiful ones are not yet born…..yeah! Keep focused”

In the letters, the girls became alive and wrote passionately about their individual struggles with language, ethnic tensions, school regulations, grades, and desires for love. The latter subject was always switched off as a deviant thought. The Sacred Heart girl always described her ordeals in fine details, providing names and frequency of boys from various schools in Gulu who schemed desperately, with all strategies and tactics to display their adolescent vigor for her emerging curvatures.

“They write to me love letters, some use obscenity, others are so funny, but some, unbelievably are arrogant and abusive. I think some boys just lack class”. The one from Nabingo narrated her ordeals of tribalism, tribal hate, discrimination, and unsavory punishment that she encountered. Her letters always ended with a sigh of hope "....nino mo bene bi gik".

Twenty years later, the two girls met again. The meeting was occasioned. The heartless shocks of S6 exams had created a rift between them. Nancy went to a business school while Pauline had proceeded to a university overseas. Over the years, two of the brothers who lived in exile had secured for her a place. So she left without informing her dearest friend. The lull between the two had eroded the bond of camaraderie and left each to their own fate.

Pauline had returned to the country a changed person.  She appeared smooth and affluent but uprooted. She knew little about the new trends in Uganda, Kampala or even Gulu. The two friends thus met with fate in a dingy dusty city street full of noise and fast passed people going about their everyday hassle.  None had the childhood zeal for their ideal vows had been abrogated by the cruelty of A level exams.

A level exam is a bitch. Had the girls passed well, they could have reunited at MUK or any other publicly funded University. Their sisterhood bond could have reinforced. But now, they were like two strangers meeting in Umuofia.

On the fateful day of their surprise meeting, Pauline was the first to recognize Nancy. At first, she had her doubts. But she kept following her to confirm from a scar on Nancy’s forehead from playing Nyorio in childhood. Once Pauline confirmed that she approached with an exuding eagerness.

“Jal, Nancy, ningo!” She called out. Nancy froze at hearing a familiar and yet a distant voice that hit her like a din from the past.

Nancy recognized the characteristic voice of her childhood friend – her bestie. It was still rich with the same old passion, sharp and soft.  Nancy halted her walk and came to a sudden stop. She shivered and strengthened her grip on ger handbag when another passer-by body bumped her. Kampala is a city with many tales.

"Itye nining, man an Pauline do, jal dyera!" Pauline reaffirmed herself and crackled with a big smile like someone who had just recovered from comatose to realize that they were not yet dead!

"Ayii, atye, an Nancy to jal....", as Nancy turned fully to orient herself to the new development.

“Man in?”, Nancy inquired, to confirm.

"Man komi, dong iling kum?" Pauline asked.

"Anongi kwene kono, makun bwomi otwiiyo ni, ojone", Nancy reiterated as she stretched her arms to reach her long lost friend for a huge hug, pushing her leather purse towards her back. Nancy’s eyes locked in recognition of her friend’s rather polished features.

                                                 *******************

The two women hugged and talked a sthey drew themselves away from the centre of the street to the shades under a verandar. Behind them a strong aroma oozed. It was a restaurant. On the other side were hardware shops. The noise on the street made everyone strained. The two friends decided to walk casually, hand-in-hand, and head-on-head to a nearby restaurant for some quiet. Pauline sat Nancy down, or vice versa. They exchanged pleasantries and contact information. The conversation was explosive. It appeared they wanted to talk about everything but skirted on the surface. Each had to account for their absence of for the near-misses given their childhood vows.

Time, as usual was not there when most needed. Nancy on realizing that time had passed quite quickly, pressed the "I must go" button. Pauline was hesitant. She ignored the call to let go. Pauline was still not in the mood for disengaging. She talked on and on and on.

"Wabed kong diya, pe imming an?" Pauline Pressed curiously while her eyes peeved into Nancy’s with that childhood protest.

"Tell me, tell me something", Pauline just continued as if their meeting had just begun. She ordered for another cup of tea,

"Man imiti awaci ni ngo? An dong adoko imat mujee, lutino adeg ki Lacoo Boo-kec moni". They both burst out into a ball of heartily laughter.

"Boo-kec we! Ah, man ber do. Eno ma oweko dong imito muku wot me dok pacu ni?" Pauline asked

"Ku bene ya...atye ka ryemo kor cul na moni, atye atimo business i town kany. Kwo eni dong pa Min Obet gi ni yaa",Nancy laughed indiscreetly and yet reassuringly. Nancy's humility always exuded to mask any of her true circumstances, whether happy, successful or in trouble, she remained calm. Now she felt her statement accounted for the grand dreams the two friends had at childhood.

Pauline gave Nancy’s responses a thought. She glanced at her watch and indeed the time had gone. She had to make a phone call to her husband in Italy. Those calls have to be consistent – same time every day or a constellation of other questions and demand for explanations ensues.

"Aya wek dong awek iring, ci omyero igoona cim wek dok warwate ma peya adok i Italy ba" Pauline offered to continue the conversation at a later date.

"In kono, komi ki moo ma lyel alyela calo mac kibirit ni, kwo tye ka teri nining?" Nancy now asks a matter of fact question.

"Kwo perac, ento waboko nino ma lacen" Pauline retorted. “Cawa ne bene dong odiya”, she concluded.

"Ayela peke, abineno ne.....abilwongi wek ibin wa i pacu i ceng abicel eni. Yube. An abedo inge bar dege kacaa. Atami ingeyo onyo iwinyo kama tye iye?"

"Ayenyo-o jal, meno lok ma tidi mada", Pauline assures Nancy as the two women rose to hug and bid another farewell.

Part 2....loading!

The hunger pandemic awaits us – so lets us grow food during COVID-19

COVID-19 Pandemic and Hunger

The reason we fear COVID-19 is that we fear to die. However, some more situations and conditions are causing death while we run away from COVID-19-related deaths. Deaths and human sufferings have no preferred causes. If we have decided to fear COVID-19-related death, we should also protect our population from other causes of preventable deaths and anguish, including hunger and starvation.

In a few more weeks to come, the level of frustration from parents failing to feed and treat their children under this COVID-19 regime will climax. The national COVID-19 Response teams should not only focus on the containment aspect of COVID-19, but develop and implement plans to treat the sick, and ensure undisrupted food production. Evidence shows that good and regular nutrition is effective in fighting COVID-19 and all diseases.

The patterns of government's food distribution are already showing signs of a significant pending famine that may kill more than COVID-19. In Northern Uganda, parents of children with nodding disease are starving. If you wish to understand the impact of nurturing children with nodding disease, just go to Omoro district and see for yourself.

But who cares for these wretched souls? All they care about is the vulnerable urban poor in Kampala and Wakiso!

Last week, a friend reached out to me for help. His family has been confined to a village where there are hardly any amenities left. The gentleman has a motorbike, but only he can ride to the garden, 6km away. He cannot transport his family members on his motorbike or mobilize villagers to come to support his farming activities. He has run out of food and medicines for his aging parents and children who may die anyway.

I read somewhere that the government is transporting people from Busoga to Lamwo district to teach locals there how to grow sugarcanes. If such people could assemble in the field, why is it so difficult to ease the countryside to farm?

The UN Fund for Agriculture (FAO) has sounded the alarm bell for global famine, predicting severe food shortages. The COVID-19 containment measures have a profound impact on the entire system of food production and must not be taken lightly.

Farmers could still adapt physical distancing while farming, say for at least five hours a day three times a week. Their movement to the farms could be coordinated within a specific window of time, say between 5 am -11 am or a shorter shift of 4 – 8 pm so that farmers could harness the rains to grow food, and the dry period for harvesting to make food available in the markets.

In Uganda, the patterns of COVID-19 community spread is predicted with precision. Of recent, most of the cases are resulting from our lackadaisical handling of Truck drivers from source countries like Tanzania Kenya. Once this problem is sorted out, the Farmers could be eased into activities.

Once we contain truck drivers and people moving from country to country, we shall have a more definitive control over community transmission COVID-19. Rwanda, for instance, has embarked on mass testing of its citizens, owing to its small population. We could adopt this method for farming communities. Farmers in remote villages separated from contact with the outside world should be given farming privileges to avert a severe food shortage.

Lastly, let the Office of the Prime Minister scale the food distribution or unconditional cash transfers to every part of Uganda. People are trapping rats and mice for a meal because they have run out of food. The Coronavirus emerged precisely because of these crazy consumption patterns that promote zoonosis. Let's prevent eating snakes, cats, rats, and bats.

END.

What new things did you learn during this lock down?

COVID-19 INSIGHTS

Soon, countries will begin to thaw from the COVID-19 global lockdown. Research and Academic journals will be flooded with all sorts of studies about the impact of the COVID-19 on a wide range of issues, from causation, pathogenesis, management to the economy, human rights violation, mental health, etc.

Ugandans will consume this literature passively. Personally, I have read quite a bit and participated in so many webinars initiated by academics, researchers, and professionals from various fields. The might of this pandemic has been hegemonic, freezing the world’s economy and consumptions. It has also stretched healthcare systems and placed spotlights on many social and historical inequalities in society.

In Europe and the US where its impact remains dramatic, we saw different people affected differently. The poor and the blacks were reportedly suffered a disproportionate level of hospitalization and mortality compared with other races. The bottom line is that COVID-19, as we know, is not a “cold-hearted” killer as such. It kills those already riddled with certain degrees of disadvantages – older, frail, pre-existing conditions, oppressed, and lacks access to medical care.

In Europe, countries have some sort of universal health coverage. This every person can access timely healthcare services they need. In the US, the story is different; fewer people have health insurance and more so, the poor Blacks, Hispanics and a sizeable proportion of rural white population.

The US is the leader of neoliberal economic ideas – where the government is forced out of providing health care and private providers are given the mantle. The colonial healthcare systems that Uganda inherited, was not structured the US way or now the Museveni-era healthcare. The colonial-era healthcare was financed directly by the state from taxpayers’ money, and there was no cost-sharing or discrimination based on ability to pay.

During colonial times, the formal sector was made to privilege colonial workers, most of whom were serving the colonial agenda. Health care and education were part of the reward for their loyal services. Housing was part of the package for teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, Police, Prisons, and the Senior Management Team of various state ministries and agencies.

The health service privileges were extended to the general workers in the formal sector, only employ about 10% of the population or less, while most Ugandans were rural-based farming privately to augment raw materials for European civilization. These farmers also produced cash crops and food crops to sustain the colonial state labour force and paid taxes. A healthy rural reserve sustained a steady supply of labour for expanding mining and industrial work. This post-war social policy was consistent with the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940, and amended in 1945.

The Museveni-era liberalization of the economy dismantled that. They imposed cost-sharing, reduced the size of government workers at first, to shed off “Obote’s loyalists”, before expanding it irregularly with a loyal ethnic-based cadership.

The Museveni regime reducing the proportion of its health spending on health neglected its management and maintained a stockout of essential medicines to about 80%. It is only recently that they have mooted a National Health Insurance System, copying from those in capitalist countries.

 Most industrialized capitalist countries offer healthcare based on health insurance policies, mostly related to labour attachment. But there are many different models. In Canada, only the state can buy health insurance, thereby reducing market competition – the type in the US where individuals and companies buy health insurance from the same market. In Switzerland, insurance companies cannot make a profit, except on supplemental plans; Japan, Germany, UK, and others have their own systems tailored to the typology of their welfare state systems. Rwanda, our next door has its own locally made success story.

During this COVID-19, I learned that liberalized healthcare may be a façade that cannot sustain frequent pandemics of our generation. There is a need to rethink seriously of universal healthcare as a public good and rights of the people, not a market commodity for those who can afford it.

End. 

COVID-19 and the limit of science-inclined education policy

COVID-19 Hotspot - 

The coronavirus continues to challenge the logic of the old-world order by spotlighting most of its institutional inadequacies and policy lapses. However, the complementary role of physical and social sciences is reaffirmed for cynics to bear.

It would take a long article to reproduce the origins and imperatives of having both the physical and social sciences taught at colleges and universities. Experiences of COVID-19 has simplified this debate for public consumption.

There is a need to clarify the purpose of education as an important driver of a progressive society. The way education is organized in a country reflects the ideology of the regime in power on a wide range of issues. Education feeds all the sensitive aspects of the economy and informs societal functions.  How a country organizes and delivers its education also reveals its patterns of domination. For instance, when a certain group in a country has unfettered access to the best education that a nation can offer, such a group also obtains and sustains the monopoly of power over the means production.

A good example is when state resources are skewed to privilege policies for one sector over the other; undermine physical sciences over social sciences; affirmative action for one group over the other; and state scholarship for one group and denied to another.  

In the above scenario, a country is likely to get a section of its graduates who are problematized, reduced in esteem, made subjects with limited prospects. This group often strays into careers that are underdeveloped. For a long time, comedy and music suffered such a fate, until a new generation transformed these industries into lucrative, competitive, and attractive ventures.

The COVID-19 is here with us, but scientists have failed to find a timely cure, vaccines, or deliver consistent tests. Much of the COVID-19 work is situated at the community levels and moderated between persons.

This virus is profoundly sensitive and intelligent in selecting its target and population. No one can yet explain why it has shied away from poor Africans. A recent journal article observed that this pandemic has become a great sampling device for social analysis. The author argued that unlike other previous outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemic, COVID-19 has made visible the usually latent societal structures of inequities.

Most societies have embraced the limit of sciences in dealing with COVID-19, thereby turning to break community transmission of COVID-19 using non-scientific measures such as quarantine and physical isolation. The Lancet Journal is full of commentaries decrying potential mental health impacts of these measures. Prolonged quarantine measures may even trigger a wave of psychosocial distress pandemic.  

But most of this work involves the expertise of social workers, sociologists, and community workers in tandem with field scientists.

For instance, public health officials are trained sufficiently and equipped with the science and social theories that attempt to mobilize, understand, organize, and move societies out of danger.

Thus, COVID-19 has demonstrated that a prudent modern society could do with both physical and social sciences such that where one fails, the other compliments. After all, scientific innovations find relevance with its social adaptation. A television could only work with theatres; immunization gained public approval through community interactions; politics define sciences in as much as scientific advancement shapes and defines politics, culture, and traditions. The left-hand washes the right hand.

The beauty of being alive is that we learn every day. The mechanics of life have roots in sciences while the course of daily life is steeped within a complex mesh of social relations.

We now know that with just minimal sciences, such as accurate testing of COVID-19 and proper medical care, the most potent public response to breaking community transmission of a COVID-19 is physical isolation and change in patterns of wasteful consumption.

End.