COVID-19 puts the globe at halt 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems to me the world was on a great advance towards where nobody could tell, either nature or the Almighty God through coronavirus called the world to a great halt.

 

Now when the commander calls his advance troop to halt, he/she has already done his situational analysis. Which in simple terms is judging the terrain, the troops and the weapon system at his disposal versus those of his opponents' and then come to a logical conclusion. In military terms we call that the Situational Analysis or weighing the factors open to you and the factors open to the enemy by balancing the factors the commander comes to a logical conclusion. The word logical should be underlined. The options for the commander are whether to continue advance to, dig in defence or to retreat.

 

The whole human race is at a halt, they do not know whether to advance at the pace they had set to dig into defensive postures or to withdraw.

 

Nature through COVID-19 has caused a pull back on the military front. Warships, weapon carriers of deadly weapons are now marooned on high seas, they cannot dock neither can they deploy their arsenals.

 

On the business front, the corporate world is doing its SWOT analysis not very different from the military situational analysis. What is interesting between the two is the word SITUATION.  Each of the two entities are weighing their strength and weakness. 

 

On the political front the situation is not any better, each political leader wishes to continue fulfilling his/her mandate at leading the people from backwardness, poverty and disease, while at the same time continue working bearing in mind the next elections.

 

The question COVID-19 is asking; as human beings are you on the right track, are you sure of where you are going ? Please halt, assemble and go back to the drawing board. All the three entities, the political world, the business and the economic world is now doing what we call after battle assessment review.

 

Globally, the human race has been on a very accelerated advance stage from cave dwellers to sky scrapers from walking to motor vehicles and planes to space craft. In medicine, there are so many break throughs. On food security, agriculture has gone beyond using only arable land to deserts. Everything seemed to be moving as they should be.  However, nature or the Almighty has called man to HALT and asked man are you sure where you are going is the right direction. 

 

The earth was created by God for a purpose if you believe in scientific evolution the very earth evolved in a pattern for a purpose.

 

About a million years man in his quest to tame nature started doing this contrary to natural ways. With technological advancement, man treaded on the moon-built cities under water and castles in huge forests. Nature observed all this with contempt and now it is calling man to order.

 

Man tried to extend his/her life span from the God given time table to his own time table. 

The population of man grew at an unprecedented proportion. Animals and plants life were disrupted by human quest for habitants and Agric land. The oceans were not spared, the fish and the marine life destroyed.  Oil which was underground was dug up and used to pollute the atmosphere. Minerals were dug up and dead grounds were created in excavated ground. All this reduced in size available to man's existence.

 

Nature had placed oil in some desert and so the population of these places was never at the same pace of reproduction as those areas which nature gave like forests and rivers and enough sunshine.

 

Man is by nature a lazy animal who wants maximum benefit with minimum input. So, he invented machine which could do work for him/her. The outcome was over population and over production in but which man missed to know is at what expense.

 

Man is a greedy animal and highly selfish. He/she thinks of him/herself first. So, the only few have all the means of production which created the rich and the poor. The capacity for the rich to oppress the poor is known as power.

 

Through all the developments man started segmenting world population into three segments, the top super power, the middle class and the bottom peoples in billions (Africa and Latin America) the potential power of any of this segment are calculated using a simple formula;

 

Each of the nations of the world aspire to have the basic need of life like food, shelter, clothing, medication and sex. The second and important need is security.

 

Security is the absence of threat. Threats are never quantified. There are physical and psychological and unprecedented occurrences like the current COVID-19. How each nation state will deal with this threat will depend on the peoples' preparedness. 

 

The COVID-19 endemic has turned up to a global equaliser. Now the differences between super power and model income bottom-line is all level. This COVID-19 respects no political boundaries and no class supremacy.

 

Where is Africa as a whole and Uganda in particular in all this? The geographical, physical features of any nation or state determines the inhabitants of that state's character, physical features, height, skin colour, survival skills etc. since human beings are an enigma each individual reacts in his/her own way to any stimuli.

 

The reaction to this COVID-19 has thrown all nations into panic and each nation is now assessing where it went wrong. The first to suffer will be the economy. I do not think the stock exchange is about to open soon so the balance of trade is really ironically in a balance. 

 

Who is going to buy what from who, that is where each entity will have to do a stock balance? What are the opportunities open to us, what are the threats? With that in mind, I humbly request that our Uganda Budget be readjusted to fit within our means.

 

Africa as a whole and Uganda in particular has been led by the nose into many unproductive ventures. We have been involved in wars of conquests for others, we act as just pones in a big chess game. 

 

In the early 40's, we were forced to fight in a European war the so-called world war. What was the aim of that war and what was Africa's role? The war was about world supremacy and how to divide the dividends after the war. The whole of African population was used as mules for carrying war material for the white fighter. Ugandans fought for a King and later a Queen of England and up to now we are proud of our war veterans. When the war was over with Hitler out of the way, the owner of the land met in Berlin Germany to divide the loot. 

 

Ironically no African combatant was invited and Uganda and other African countries became Anglophone. The others became francophone. Others Belgium phone etc. No Africa phone, what a scenario.

 

The fragmentation of the African continent created the master servant at the worst pet relationship between the white master and the African servants.

 

When a person is colonised for long, he suffers from what psychologists define as the Stockholm syndrome. Ugandans become more British than the Britons themselves. The Congolese, Togolese, Ivorians etc become more French than Maria Antoinette.

 

We are proud to be fluent in English and have a false superiority confidence over our brothers and sisters who speak our mother tongue. Because of this, all Africans started to look up to our former if not current masters for solutions to all our problems. 

 

Now COVID-19 has shown that no human being is superior to the other when nature reacts. Ugandans were so colonised that they listen to world leaders more than their own leaders. Now the super power leaders are also stuck, so what is the way forward?

 

We can no longer fly to Dubai to collect factory rejects or to import used cars, so no business. Medical tourism is now no more. Shops which used to stock foreign products are now closed etc. so what is next?

 

Why is the collapse of the stock exchange not hurting Uganda? I look at Uganda and Africa in general like a person with huge land which having failed to turn it into production, goes in the street and shouts, I have land, I have minerals, please come and turn it into useful products. Come grow cotton and make suits for me to buy. Come mine the iron ore and phosphorous and turn it into steel for my infrastructure. Come make roads for me and charge me as much as you want. I need todays meal the future will take care of itself.

 

We call such people foreign direct investors. I need to be educated, are we really going the right way after allowing these investors for more than 100 years? and now we the colonised and the colonies are facing a similar problem.

 

The human race has had a well-tested survival mechanism which was interrupted and distorted by the advent of technology. Pharmacies become commercial and even medical doctors were taught more to do with cure for certain diseases which affected the upper-class people and forgot about the bottom majority. Now Uganda tries to find a solution to its problem it must first find approval and sanction from the commercial pharmaceutical and medical bodies.

 

Can Ugandans please for the first time listen to what our leader is saying since what he says has been tested and proved effective?

 

Some of us who have worked with H.E President Yoweri Museveni for more than 30 years; know that he really takes time to do research before he makes any pronouncement on anything. However, since most of what he says seems usual, we always fail to follow it to our detriment.

 

For instance, in 1983, while in the bush, he used to listen to a program called Health focus on BBC, and at the High Command meeting, he told us of a disease which could not be cured by our penicillin drugs. Those days having been cut off by the government forces then, there were few female participants in the bush and the few available were handled democratically. Some fighters ended up with venereal diseases and resorted to all kinds of antibiotics to an extent of using animal drugs.

 

The President and Chairman of the High Command CHC was aware of our ways, so he warned us point blank that the new disease kills and has no cure. Some of us dismissed it and asked why Mzee (President Museveni) was denying us the only way of letting off steam and relaxation of the body. Mind you that was in 1983. Between 1984/85 we had captured a big part of Uganda thus covering a big population. 

 

We the fighters became vulnerable and endangered species since we were still young and strong with power. So, the female civilians admired and welcomed us. Some of us who passed through Mbarara and Masaka were welcomed by the most beautiful creatures God had created, the rest is history as they say.

 

Two years after capturing power in 1986, we started to die like flies. The AIDS scourge like the current COVID 19 did not respect rank or wealth. It eliminated our young population and up to now, the few former liberators as we were called thank God why we are still alive.

 

The Presidents answer to AIDS was to avoid sex. Abstain, use condoms or have only one partner. Just three things, now he is saying; 

 

Dear Ugandans let us heed to the call of the President and wait for other solutions but let us use the resources at our disposal. 

 

Stay home and stay safe