President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Friday announced that Zimbabwe is to go on lockdown on Monday, 30 March 2020 to combat coronavirus.
Following the announcement, we have rounded up the views expressed by various prominent Zimbabweans through the microblogging site Twitter. Below are some of the comments:
Trevor Ncube: Our delayed lockdown is finally here. We cant even organize a lockdown to protect lives. I blame the sanctions. Period
Fadzayi Mahere: No economic plan. No public health plan. No plan for workers. No plan for the homeless. No food security plan But the command element will be out in full force! He copied the first & last line of Ramaphosa’s answer sheet but left out the 10 pages in between!!! Zero substance.
Lockdown for 21 days but no word on doctors’ strike, closure of hospitals & what the plan is to treat the sick. No word on Wilkins & Thorngrove that have extremely limited capacity. Are people meant to stay home and die? We need new leaders.
Pedzisai Ruhanya: So Zimbabwe under ZANU PF is following everything that South Africa is doing to combat coronavirus bar the fact that it is a competitive authoritarian regime that muzzles information and feeds on lies and propaganda
Jealousy Mawarire: Hope the security details will have protective clothing themselves otherwise bullets & ramshackle military tanks won’t coup the virus. Security details are human beings prone to contracting the disease if they come in contact with infected people who might choose to defy the curfew.
Larry Kwirirayi: Hi @InfoMinZW is the media also under lockdown? Cause you know, we need to make sure we report the issues. So if there are violations we can report them. Asking for myself and many friends?
Obert Gutu: Zimbabwe
lockdown is upon us! It’s a very painful but absolutely essential Gvt emergency intervention! There’s no gain without pain!
Nqaba Matshazi: If I was Mnangagwa, I would have just said here’s my speech “Ctrl + C, Ctrl V Ramaphosa’s announcement. Thank you!”
Raymond Majongwe: While we support the Lockdown Civil servants will struggle to pull through the 21 days. Mari yakapera kare President @edmnangagwa. This will be like a death sentence. A salary advance would have come in handy. Your workers are going to suffer in this period.
Nyasha Musandu: Lockdown is definitely the only move we have given our fragile health system. BUT: What happens to the homeless? We have over 7 million Zimbabweans who are food insecure, what’s the plan there? Will provinces also be equipped to deal with cases or just test? So many questions…
Chalton Hwende: We must all comply with the decision to stay at home from Monday for 21 Days. We are facing a very serious pandemic that needs all Zimbabweans to unite and join hands in order to curtail the spread of this virus. Team Zimbabwe will win together this war against Covid19.
Hopewell Chin’ono: The decision taken to put the country on lockdown is the correct one! Today Italy lost 919 citizens to Coronavirus. Its new cases have gone up by 6000. So it is important to stay at home to stop infectious. It is going to be tough for many of our people bcoz of poverty.
These 21 days are going to require unity of purpose .We are living in bad times.My worry are the informal and civil service who barely can survive a weeks lockdown. I hope The donor community and private sector will step up efforts to assist .
Private sector is in this economy as well, most private businesses only have enough money weekly to operate other than the big companies like the chefs own and with small companies making up a majority of employment people will go hungry as they can not afford to pay people for 3 weeks. The government can not expect private sector to cover their forced shutdown when the private sector already pays for 90% of the unemployed, every where else gave notice so people could make plans and 2 days notice on a weekend is not notice.
Zimbabwe is just a complete screw up of a country and mass murderer manangagwas will hide in a hole with all his commy zanu friends and reappear spotless if possible
Indeed lockdown but the time they will unlock the $470 000 will be gone by these guys.
Hey better to die of corona than to die of hunger. We are locked down Mr President but we do not have food.
Patrolling soldiers should give us handouts . Death is inevitable here
Lockdown is nothing you have to lock down and test people before virus those have virus to be treated And those without they continue
Covid-19 lockdown and sanctions where do they meet? When you join a gangster you also think like one.