When the government introduced the option of members of the public walking into a private clinic and get tested for Covid-19, the idea was to ease access for those who wanted to know their status. The plan was that upon finding out that you are positive and that your symptoms are non-existent or just mild, it would be mandatory that you go home. There, you would be required to isolate yourself for a mandatory 14 days and follow the strict guidelines put in place to protect everyone else in your home and community from getting infected. Unfortunately, it has recently emerged that some people have taken advantage of this to hide their positive status and continue to freely mingle with the rest of the community, putting millions of Rwandans at risk of contracting the virus. Rwandans, like most Africans are guided by ‘ubuntu’ (‘ubumuntu’ in Rwanda), a set of principles that encompass the essential human virtues of compassion and humanity. The ‘ubuntu’ philosophy teaches that a person is a person because of or through others. It is also often described as the capacity in an African culture to express compassion, reciprocity, dignity, humanity and mutuality in the interests of building and maintaining communities with justice and mutual caring. These are the same values that we have been trying to incorporate into our daily lives for the last 26 years. This is mostly because our country’s history has taught us that we benefit more when we work together as Rwandans, instead of advancing personal and sometimes selfish agendas. Whether we see it or not, the setbacks that each additional individual who is infected with Covid-19 suffers eventually trickle down to each one of us every single day. The national lockdown imposed by the government in March last year left many people jobless and businesses closed. Our actions today should not only be guided by the spirit of ‘ubuntu’ but also from the bad experiences that we have already gone through in less than one year. Our main mission in the face of adversity should be to take individual responsibility to protect ourselves and others. That’s all it takes. The government says that it will hold any patient found roaming around criminally liable and he or she will be slapped with charges relating to the wilful intent to transmit an illness to others. This is the right call but does it really need to get to that? Our country is currently overwhelmed putting all the human and financial resources it has in ensuring that each Rwandan gets the support that they may need during this crisis. As responsible citizens, our core responsibility during this period is to provide our support through observing the standard operating procedures of washing hands, wearing facemasks, and keeping the one metre social distance. We can only leave this pandemic behind if we hold ourselves and others to very high standards of responsibility and accountability.
