Last week on Wednesday morning, a China Southern Airlines flight with 239 passengers aboard landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from China where coronavirus has killed more than 2,800 people and infected at least 85,000 others.
That the Kenyan state permitted a flight from a highly dangerous land, itself overwhelmed by the endemic, speaks much about the sovereignty of black people and the traction that imperialism has made in Kenya in the recent times.
The Kenyan government knows it doesn’t have a functioning healthcare system that can handle a virus of such magnitude. Yet our leaders have the nerve to open the gates to the virus – probably because she owes China billions of money and could not say no to a request to bring in the Chinese nationals.
This happened during the Black History Month during which blacks are supposed to reflect on the progress they have made since freedom from slavery. But are we really free?
The Ministry of Health has been advising passengers coming in from China to self-quarantine and insisting that the government has put in place sufficient resources and mechanisms to respond to the deadly virus.
How does one self-quarantine? Do you just lock yourself from the world and ignore your human urges to meet other humans and talk?
The deadly virus has sent some of the world's most powerful nations back to the drawing board yet Kenyan leaders are playing catch with coronavirus; citizens being it.
Journalism student, Multimedia University of Kenya
