Coronavirus pandemic: Those who hesitate have plunged into crisis

Many opine about what constitutes leadership.

Some say it is the art of making quick decisions. Some say it is for those who do not succumb to politics when creating policy. Others argue that a true leader has the ability to recognise a problem before it becomes an emergency.

I would call such a person more than a leader, a visionary.

A visionary is someone who looks at long term strategic issues and deals with them today rather than waiting for tomorrow. 

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his government had already put in place precautions against the threat of Coronavirus before it arrived, and hopefully this will pay off in the long run as the first cases are seen in our nation.

The Central Bank of Kenya has been implementing measures to move away as much as possible from cash for some time. Now, Safaricom has scrapped fees for mobile money transactions below 1,000 shillings in order to encourage cashless payments, in part to stop the spreading of the virus through the handling of money. 

Furthermore, schools have been shuttered and any travelers from countries with a single Coronavirus case have been barred from entering for 30 days.

Those who arrived in Kenya over the last 14 days have been told to self-quarantine, and anyone who has a fever or cough should be tested.

These are tough measures, and particularly robust for a nation with only a handful of people who have tested positive for the Coronavirus, and all so far have come from abroad or been in direct contact with someone who was overseas.

However, we have seen in Italy, Iran and Spain, among many others, what happens when nations hesitate. 

The Republic of Kenya is an advanced nation in this region with abilities and achievements that are the envy of its neighbours. 

President Kenyatta, nonetheless, is not looking at our immediate neighbours, and has long compared our nation with our more advanced counterparts.

These are the nations that he is watching carefully to better understand how advanced economies and policies are formulated and led.

He not only has direct working knowledge of how they work, he also has close personal relations with many of their leaders, so he will have been following very intently what works and what does not among those countries that have already borne the brunt of the global pandemic.

President Kenyatta has learnt one singular lesson, the need to act with urgency and necessity before the virus starts to spread. 

He has envisioned the two scenarios that are laid out before any leader in today’s world.

The first is to enact smaller, less intrusive policies so as not to disrupt life and the economy in the hope that the impending crisis will not be reached. Some leaders around the world have hoped that they can allow life to continue as normal, and failed to enact restrictions that would prove unpopular.

The other scenario is to act quickly and swiftly and to take all precautions necessary for the long-term good of the public.

Unfortunately, far too few leaders have chosen the second path and one by one countries are crumbling under the weight of inaction. Nations like Italy, a member of the G7, did not act quickly enough and now the whole country is in complete shutdown for the foreseeable future.

President Kenyatta wants to prevent this and so has acted with decisiveness and determination. He has weighed up all the options and the pros and cons of each policy and marked a path that will be the most effective while also being the least disruptive as possible.

It is a certainty that the full extent of the crisis is yet ahead of us, and it will certainly get a lot worse before it gets better. This is an international crisis that has hampered nations in every corner of the globe.

The economic impact will not be felt merely locally but globally. Kenya is not an island where it can lower the impact on its own.

However, it can lay down strict regulations to ensure the wellbeing and safety of its people, and this is what President Kenyatta is doing.

His vision in recognising a problem before it becomes an emergency could well be what saves many lives in Kenya.