Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, believes the biggest problem for African authorities managing the fight against the coronavirus pandemic is the “social indiscipline of our people”.
President Museveni expressed his sentiments in a tweet he posted on Wednesday on his official Twitter page. This follows what has become a daily habit of telling Ugandans what he personally feels during these times..
The 75-year-old wrote: “We are not fighting against #COVID-19 here and in Africa. We are fighting primarily against the social indiscipline of our people. They do not want to follow even the simplest guidelines, for them, it must be always about convenience, but this is a matter of life and death.”
Museveni continued: “Some people were putting pressure that they want an exemption to organize exams online. This is not understanding situations. People should stop speaking the language of normalcy in the period of abnormalcy. There is a time for everything, this is not the time for exams.”
The Ugandan president has been known to often speak out and clamp down on the indiscipline he believes is a social canker.
These anti-indiscipline campaigns have targeted both civilians and people in Uganda‘s security services.
In 2016, during a passing out ceremony for Ugandan soldiers, Museveni warned that indiscipline was the worst possible thing the soldiers could entertain.
Last year, he launched a campaign that was described by local media as “a crackdown on indiscipline”.
Uganda is currently under a 14-day lockdown in order to lower the potential of a spread of the coronavirus. But some, especially traders and others from lower-income brackets, have complained about the adversity brought to them.
At the time of going to press, Uganda had recorded 53 cases of the coronavirus with no recoveries or deaths.
