The reason Covid-19 laws are disobeyed

Are Kenyans not better off without law? Put it the other way; do laws matter to us? Honestly, aren’t we allergic to following the law? If not, why would the President give orders meant to save us from tentacles of Covid-19 but the next minute we are exactly where we were without the orders?

Where were we before the executive orders were read to us last Friday? Running political rallies all over the place which, by the way, were banned in the previous presidential public address. We were in clubs dancing ourselves to the high heavens. We were in markets buying and selling with minimal respect to best practices in breaking the chain of Covid-19. In sum, we were all over doing anything we wanted. So what changed after the address? To the best of what we can see, nothing.

It is no wonder then that the big funeral in Bungoma over the weekend in which several high-ranking government officials attended was not an isolated case. In the past year, while we have been encouraged to understand the “painful decisions” that have to be made to flatten the coronavirus curve, the same government has facilitated many gatherings that undermine the very “painful decisions.”

The question we need to engage with is this: does the open deviance to executive orders, not just on following Covid-19 protocols but also in many others such as on fighting corruption, indicate we have laws that we don’t need? 

Dr Martin Luther King said all people must obey just laws. However, he was quick to add that an unjust law is not law at all. When it comes to funerals, weddings and political rallies, the laws we have seem unjust. That is why, one would argue, people simply disobey. Such laws are impractical. They make no sense and so people opt for disobedience.

But in there lies the very problem the laws are meant to address. The virus spreads faster in gatherings, more so, in gatherings in which about three quarter have no masks or if they do, they just hang them below the chin. Does it mean we fail to see the correlation between public gatherings and the spread of the virus? Kenyans are well educated people, so I doubt this is the problem.

It is not exactly clear why then we disobey public orders even on matters that are in, and for our interest. Let me run with three hypotheses though.

First, even if, as the Bible would put it, someone were to arise from the dead to tell us that hell exists, we will still break the law. Our very own brothers and sisters have, thankfully, recovered from the disease.

Unfortunately, some did not make it. We therefore have witness in our midst that the fight against Covid-19 is in our interest both at personal and collective levels. But, basically we just don’t care about life anymore. It is as if we have reached a boiling point. That is, if death knocks, so be it. This is fatalism. You could also see it as a subscription to predestination.

Second, we have irrelevant laws. It is claimed Kenya has one of the most progressive Constitutions in the world. But, look at the chaos in observing the “progressive law”. The lack of goodwill, political goodwill more specifically, to implement the letter and spirit of the Constitution suggests that after all, the law is probably not that necessary.

We carry on with life. Perhaps we only need minimal law – I don’t know. But surely we are not a failed state. So all we need, it appears, is more utilitarian laws to keep us hanging together out of necessity. This kind of law will help us bargain for what we need but not necessarily for the disadvantaged among us.

Public rally

Third, I must make a reminder here that we are addressing hypotheses. We are at our best using common sense in the way we carry out our public life. Now, common sense, is a form of knowledge. It helps us make decisions, make judgements and draw actionable conclusions. Common sense relies on beliefs.

For instance, attending an outlawed funeral gathering is less evil than sticking to rules of breaking coronavirus chain which means society will charge you harshly if you don’t register your presence at a funeral. It is also experiential; we interact at so many public points that attending a public rally is not a licence to contracting the coronavirus. Conclusively, somehow we hate rigorous systematic thinking whose outcome is logical law but whose implementation seem unnecessary.  

More and more, I am beginning to think we have too much impractical law. Ironically, less law doesn’t mean we will be better off. Should we try common sense laws?

-Dr Mokua is the Executive Director of Loyola Centre for Media and Communication