Page 83 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 7

COMMUNITY
little later than required. Many
wondered, is it that the disease
becomes more potent at exactly
7pm? Others said that one has
to be firm when enforcing new
requirements otherwise the
people don’t listen. I person-
ally think it’s that the law was
issued to enforcers and either
the law maker or the enforcer or
both, did not carefully consider
that: 1) They were dealing with
people, like themselves, who
ought to be treated as humans;
2) The law in and of itself could
have been interpreted with
compassion, rather than brute
force and that this would have
achieved better results, as was
seen in several exceptional
cases; 3) Using brute force to
try to convince people that you
are trying to protect them from
harm might be considered to
be somewhat contradictory; 4)
The law creates hard lines and
hard positions and one should
be careful what one determines
should be enforced. This is not
just about Kenya. I saw a report
on Al Jazeera that said that
in South Afrika, people were
beaten or even shot by secu-
rity forces and that in Nigeria
security forces killed about 18
people in relation to Covid-19
enforcement measures. These
three countries have cases of
murder, rape, injustice and vio-
lence which have been reported
all in connection with a situation
where the countries in question
were trying to protect their peo- system comes knocking on our
ple from a disease. Hmm.
Sometimes I see things hap-
pen where the law is then cited
as if it was God, father, moth-
er, teacher and everything in
between, without consideration
for the circumstance. Some
responses to the things that
happened in Kenya from the
citizens were along the lines of,
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“Why couldn’t they have been
in the house on time? What’s
wrong with them? They de-
served what they got! Kenyans
don’t think.” Really? Someone’s
father, mother, brother, sister or
child deserved to be beaten by
the police to the point of injury
or death, because they were
late on day one of the curfew
and they should have planned
better so that they would not be
beaten? Meaning that if you are
in the house on time then you
are good, but if you are not then
you are bad? No consideration
for whether the law even made
sense in the first place or what
could have happened to delay
them? No cries that we should
treat each other with hearts of
compassion, but rather, ‘beat
them like the dogs they are,
they are evil, they were not in
the house on time, they are not
good like me’? For all those
who were supporting the beat-
ings, the president did apolo-
gize for what happened, so how
does that make you feel about
your position?
For any lawyers out there,
keep in mind this piece was
not written by one, but rather
by someone who is trying to
make sense of this world we
seem determined to design in
as faulty a manner as possible
- while citing good intentions
- and then defending with all
might as if we built the absolute
paragon of perfection, until the
doors, because it somehow
decided we were on the wrong
side of it.
The law is a set of written
guidelines that countries use
to establish and maintain order
within and outside of their
borders. The law is a set of
instructions that contain or com- and to help people understand
municate basic dos and don’ts
heal . restore . rebirth . Afrika
governing certain interactions
within society, the breach of
which can result in some form
of punishment or penalty or
other. The penalty is meant to
serve as a deterrent to the rest
of the citizenry of the country or
international community to pre-
vent them from daring to defy
the law. The law is supported
by a system which is used to
enforce it: law makers, police
officers (enforcers), lawyers,
judges, court houses, prisons,
pharmacists, poisoners, elec-
trocutioners and hangmen. It’s
funny just how complex the sys-
tem actually is, requiring even
different hierarchies of courts
to which one can appeal their
case, in situations where the a
ruling or judgment does not go
in one’s favor.
Laws were and are created by
people who sat/sit to determine
what is good and what is bad,
what is right and what is wrong
and to try as much as possible
to capture or consider every
possible scenario of human,
business or government inter-
action within reason. The law is
rigid and exerts penalties even
up to and including the actual
death of a person or persons
either at the hands of the police
or following a judgment in court.
Let me restate this, the law has
guidelines determining whether
you should be allowed to con-
tinue to exist on earth, or not.
The law also can define a pen-
alty that results in the absolute
and total loss of personal prop-
erty, money or freedom (time),
reputation and so on, depend-
ing on the circumstances - fair,
just and true, or not. Over time,
the law became such a com-
plex mechanism that specialists
had to be trained to understand
and navigate it. Some of these
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