Why is there still curfew?

Okay, we get it. We really do.
We get that the coronavirus led to a lockdown which sequestered citizens indoors nationwide as normality was turned on its head.

A curfew, which initially ran from 6pm to 6am and now runs from 9pm to 5.30am, was thereby normalised.

Curfew, we understood, was there to slow transmission of the virus.
However, decelerating its transmission would only be possible if the virus itself observed the curfew alongside our own observance of standard operating procedures.

Unfortunately, many Ugandans treat the coronavirus like it’s a variant of Edward Ssekandi’s vice presidency: it’s acknowledged but never appreciated.
We are so reckless. So social distancing and mask-wearing cannot be credited for our relatively underwhelming Covid-19 statistics pointing towards 40,962 cases, 40,452 recoveries and 335 deaths (at the time of writing).  

Instead, we credit good sanitisers (waragi, mainly) and Museveni’s re-election as ameliorative factors in the war against Covid-19.

The virus was very active during the presidential campaigns. But as soon as the President won, the virus apparently decided to close shop because its candidate (Museveni) had been re-elected. Indeed, the coronavirus is a big fan of autocrats.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, David Kaye, said last year: “Numerous governments have used the Covid-19 pandemic to repress expression in violation of their obligations under human rights law.”

This highlights another reason for a curfew.  By requiring wananchi to be indoors during certain hours, the curfew is being used to restrain growing disenchantment with President Museveni’s rule.  

To ensure such disenchantment doesn’t simmer to a boil, the NRM needs a curfew.
It’s too much work for the government to keep angry citizens in check day and night.
So the government has halved its workload by ensuring citizens won’t be out at night plotting their own version of “fundamental change”.

Apart from the curfew being a handy instrument of political repression, it has reduced economic activity and thereby helped secure our future in poverty.
This scenario works well for a despotic regime as a poorer citizenry is consequently forced to focus on daily survival, not political mobilisation.
But this could also have another effect.

If poverty keeps rising and government responds with more repression, an Armageddon-like conflict between ruler and subject is inevitable.
In the context of mass deprivation, a population with nothing is a population with nothing to lose but its “unpeople” status.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu calls it desperate ground: it involves one’s summoning of inner powers usually inaccessible to one in better times. This mobilises an “at all costs” mentality, where one must kill or be killed.
Yet we really don’t have to reach such a pass.

To be sure, some studies have already shown that curfews and lockdown measures have a paradoxical effect: on the one hand, they reduce the spread of the virus within communities. On the other, they also increase the risk of infection within households.

The household being the basic unit of the community ensures that with the household at risk, the community is ultimately at risk too.
So I ask again, what is the use of a curfew? Rumour has it that we have a president who is mysophobic, and is thus given to insisting upon a germ-free environment.

Apparently, that’s why his overzealous response to the pandemic was a combination of official necessity and personal compulsions.
It is time for him to remove the curfew, however.
It makes little sense keeping it in a context where the lockdown and other Covid-19 guidelines are ignored or flouted.

Mr Matogo is the managing editor Fasihi Magazine.
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