Zimbabwe

JUST IN: Opposition parties risking people’s lives

Fungi Kwaramba Political Editor
Despite the fact that Zimbabwe is still under a national lockdown that was enforced to help mitigate the devastating effects of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic,desperate opposition officials whose political careers hang by the thread now want to gain relevance by staging anti-government protests in the futile hope of effecting regime change.

Never mind the collateral damage that is certainly going to accompany such a foolish act of demonstrating under a dark cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic, itself a highly contagious disease that among other things can be curbed through social distancing, limited human movement and the wearing of face masks.

It has no known cure for now.

From the onset of the first confirmed Covid-19 case in the country, President Mnangagwa introduced a raft of measures to ensure that lives are saved under the unavoidable new normal that was spawned by the world plague.

Through a cocktail of measures, including statutory regulations, the country managed to minimise the movement of people of course at a cost to the general public who bore the brunt of limited movement, and who had to forego the comfort and comopany of loved ones.

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The President was unequivocally clear that whilst the shock effects of the economy would be redressed in the future, life lost will never be brought back and thus the lockdown, which is gradually being relaxed to allow for greater economic activitity.

So Zimbabweans, ever patriotic, played their part and adhered to the restrictions that we put in place by Government, not to emasculate them but to save lives and our record of just over 700 positive cases, mostly from returning citizens speaks volumes of the swift and timely intervention by the Government.

Indeed, a good medicine tastes bitter to the mouth but unpalatable as it is, it is something that Zimbabwe needed in order to avoid unnecessary deaths.

Covid-19, which has claimed nine lives in Zimbabwe, is not only a health crisis but is an evolving disease with far reaching political and economic ramifications whose negative impact will most certainly slow the country’s march towards Vision 2030, job creation and also economic stabilisation.

HERALD