COVID-19, a blessing in disguise for despots, strongmen

AS the COVID-19 pandemic wrought havoc on both lives and livelihoods, it led to the closure of borders.

The pandemic has not only been terrible to the human body, but it has also affected general humanity and politics around the world, where despots have sought to use it to subvert the will of the people.

COVID-19 has assisted in the erosion of democracy and respect for human rights so much that dictators like President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni have gone full throttle in suppressing dissent.

In January this year, Uganda held its general elections and the long reigning strongman Museveni was declared the winner, the results which are being contested by the opposition led by the youthful musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine.

He had vowed to occupy the streets after the elections. However, immediately after Museveni was declared the winner, heavily armed soldiers stormed the young politician’s compound and held him hostage for days on end, denying him the freedom and right to go out to mobilise people to demonstrate against a rigged election.

In Zimbabwe, for example, the bulk of the 34 new regulations passed during the national lockdown are still in place, and have been used to perpetuate abuses by the State.

In September, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum listed 920 cases of torture, extra-judicial killings, unlawful arrests and assaults on citizens by security services in the first 180 days of lockdown.

According to the report, one man was forced to roll in raw sewage while others had dogs set on them in Beitbridge and dozens of opposition activists were arrested and/or beaten, including MDC Alliance vice-presidents Tendai Biti and Lynette Karenyi-Kore, national executive members David Chimhini

and Lovemore Chinoputsa.

Three MDC Alliance activists Joanah Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova were abducted by suspected State security agents, sexually abused and forced to drink own urine and ingest own stool.

Democratically-elected representatives were expelled from Parliament and in their places, people from other political parties were handpicked to replace those who had been recalled. To add salt to the injury, government has postponed by-elections indefinitely.

Furthermore, during the lockdown, we witnessed the arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, opposition leaders Job Sikhala and Jacob Ngarivhume on allegations of inciting violence.

To all these authoritarian regimes, COVID-19 became a muchneeded veil to cover up their faces as they looted and closed the democratic space in order to entrench dictatorship.