The central question of the debate is the state’s infringement on citizens’ liberty (freedom): is it a necessity to safeguard public safety, or it is unreasonable – and, in some cases, illegal or unconstitutional – to restrict the liberty of individual citizens in the interest of the overall health of the population and the resilience of the health system? Libertarians oppose any command and control measures, the reduction of civil liberties or the expanding of state power. In the libertarian view, the state often exceeds the remits of any control provisions for dealing with existential or any real or perceived severe security threats (Jeremy Waldron, Fritz Allhoff). To be sure, the ensuing debate is far from arbitrary. It has its origins in answering the question of how far the state can go to maintain liberty and security simultaneously without jeopardising one at the expense of the other.
The AU’s caution against using COVID-19 as a justification for restricting freedom is a positive step towards reversing poor policy choices and a challenge to governments to generate policy options that strike a balance between freedom and safety.
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Public health (for example, the COVID-19 pandemic) and security might seem distinct and far removed from each other. In reality, there are some commonalities augmented by the state deployment of control methods that libertarians view as a step too far in undermining individual liberty. In Africa, this debate commenced when the first COVID-19 preventive measures were promulgated by the governments of Kenya and Ethiopia, and then almost all African countries adopted similar policies. This debate is global in all its manifestations, and the consequences of whatever approach is enacted will continue to generate heated debates that are reverberated across the globe.
A libertarian claim – well articulated or otherwise – purports that lockdown policies undermine individual preferences, hurt the economy and negatively impact the poor, particularly those who live from hand to mouth. These measures prevent the poor from venturing out for work to earn their families’ daily upkeep in countries without social safety nets or protection programmes for the poor. In almost all African countries, the lockdown has been met with resistance from the poor. Many of the poor have drawn an analogy between dying of COVID-19 or dying of hunger. Some of those who decided to resist the lockdown have chosen rather to risk dying from COVID-19 than to die of hunger. A political economy analysis of COVID-19 also reveals that the urban poor, who often live in overcrowded housing and neighbourhoods and who suffer from higher levels of malnutrition, are more likely to be infected by COVID-19 than the wealthy.
The political economy of COVID-19 aside, four points are pertinent for drawing similarities to the debate on maintaining the balance between liberty and security in implementing public safety measures in the case of COVID-19.
First, like violent conflicts, COVID-19 has inflicted the most direct negative impacts on human security, well-being and survival. Although Africa is the second-least affected world region so far, the number of COVID-19 infections is increasing rapidly (WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19 Dashboard) and there are mounting worries about Africa’s public health ability to cope with a more drastic upsurge. These worries emanate from Africa’s inadequate public health facilities, insufficient human resources and low testing capacity.
Second, to enforce public compliance with COVID-19 prevention policies, some African governments used heavy-handed command and control policies, including militarised or paramilitary interventions. For example, some countries imposed curfews, applied stringent army patrol and crowd-control tactics and gave emergency powers to the police and other security organs to ensure compliance. Opposition political parties and human rights activists interpreted some of these measures as an affront to democracy and the rule of law, covertly introduced to stifle the civic rights of their opponents. Their critique, however, should not be understood as if they are oblivious to public safety, but rather a concern about the methods used, which are similar to tactics used by authoritarian regimes when they wish to suppress opposition.
Third, the question of maintaining a balance between security (or public safety, in the case of COVID-19) and liberty looms large: how can the state maintain public safety in what could be understood as an existential threat without infringing on some elements of citizens’ liberty? The measures undertaken by governments can be considered a necessary evil. Without public safety (or security, in the case of violent conflicts), citizens will not be able to enjoy their liberty, and their very survival will be at peril.
Fourth, freedom without responsibility undermines the resilience of institutions to deal with existential threats to security and public safety. The experience so far shows that, where COVID-19 policies were eased prematurely, infections have increased and more lives were put at risk or lost.
These four concerns are not specific to Africa, and I do not claim that there is African exceptionalism. However, African institutions have exhibited more resilience and coping than what many have anticipated. A critical lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that crises reveal the resilience of the institutions responsible for their prevention and mitigation. Sceptics have decried African public health institutions’ capacity to adapt and respond to or mitigate the internal and external shocks and stress-causing effects of the pandemic. On the contrary, in many a country, African public health institutions have held their ground, with meagre and insufficient resources and health facilities.
Although the libertarians are correct in criticising the heavy-handed, security-centred methods rather than public education and awareness used by some African countries, they are wrong in stretching the liberty dictum to the extent of allowing it to interfere with the liberty of others, and their right to life. Conversely, the African Union’s caution against using COVID-19 as a justification for restricting freedom beyond public safety is a positive step towards reversing poor policy choices and a challenge to African governments to be better at generating policy options that strike a more mature balance between freedom and safety.
Mohamed A.R.M. Salih is emeritus professor in the politics of development at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands.
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Professor Mohamed A.R.M. Salih is Nobel Prize for Peace co- laureate (awarded in 2007 to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change. His latest book (co-authored, with Professor Wil Hout) is A Political Economy of African Regionalisms: An Overview of Asymmetrical Development (Edward Elgar 2019) https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/a-political-economy-of-african-regionalisms-9781785364365.html.