COVID-19 21-day lockdown is now finally here, and the prospect is far from heartening at all.
Experiences from some quasi dictatorships around the globe with regards to COVID-19-related violent lockdowns is far ensuring either.
The prospect of the perpetration of violence on the already burdened and haples citizens in efforts to lock them down in their homes from the menace of COVID-19 is terrible but real.
Horrendous displays of violence by the military in South Africa, India and Kenya is clearly heartrending.
What is more worrisome, however, is the collective negative memories of Zimbabweans under their own military.
One of Zimbabwe’s top burocrats, George Charamba, has already set the ball rolling, uncategorically stating that goverment had taken over the monitoring of COVID-19-related matters, and many Zimbabweans have a hint of what that means.
“COVID-19 has escalated from volition to compulsion which only security forces can implement,” he said unapologetically.
Zimbabweans have had nasty experiences with the country’s security sector in the past, with August 2018 seeing the wholesale slaughter of seven unarmed civilians whose only crime was to demonstrate against what they perceived to be stolen elections of that year.
Twenty-one days of national lockdown in a country already renowned as one of Africa’s “House of Hunger” is no stroll on the park!
