Subsequent to the appearance of the COVID-19 contagion, governments around the world were confronted with the challenge of combating its spread. It has been established that the infection is predominantly human to human and this reality informed the approaches used to counter it. Governments, particularly those perceived to have impeccable democratic credentials, had the difficult decision to deploy martial laws against laissez faire tactics in order to save lives. Most countries resorted to martial law, which gave leaders of governments unfettered state power to make decisions “to save lives”. Whereas most Western countries took a wait-and-see approach in implementing State of Emergencies, China and most countries in the developing world were quick to declare them. Developing countries’ records on human rights are generally poor. There has been a worldwide human rights confrontation between governments and citizens on the extent of the instruments used to fight COVID 19. Have these instruments been effective? Have they been the only necessary and key instruments to fight the pandemic? To what extent did they impinge on the human rights imperatives of the citizen? This paper interrogates the necessity of using these instruments to combat COVID-19 and their consequences on people’s rights. The paper presents the instruments used in Zimbabwe and Botswana and uses the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to compare their consequences on people’s freedoms in these countries. This research uses mixed methods in interrogating the impact of the administrative instruments that were used to combat COVID 19. Where necessary, descriptive and ethnographic approaches are employed to deepen the understanding of the impact of these instruments on human rights.

In the last month of 2019, the world was confronted by an outbreak of a novel Corona virus originating from Wuhan, China -COVID-19. The virus resulted in the deaths of more than three thousand people worldwide by the end of January 2020. By the end of March, the virus had spread to all the continents, threatening to shut down the world economy as we know it today. There was no vaccine or medication to regulate its contagion except that people were mandated to act in a precautionary way to curb its spread. There is no doubt that the corona virus pandemic presented the single most, modern challenge to the global village and globalisation. The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and subsequently, a pandemic. However, despite the decrees, there was no concerted world effort to decisively deal with the plague. Over a period of two months the virus had done extreme damage through the interaction of peoples around the world. Two strategies had become buzzwords for curbing the virus -Social distancing and Lockdown. This paper interrogates the effectiveness of Global administration to this contagion. The paper questions the ability of the global system of administration to deal with global catastrophes of this nature. Concepts of globalisation versus delinking are revisited to assess their applicability today. The paper crossexamines the role of the virus in the incessant trade and biological wars between the West and the East. Qualitative research methods, descriptive and exploratory techniques were used.

Since its formation in 1980, The Southern African Development Community (SADC) (formerly SADCC) has been confronted with a number of conflict cases within its membership. The conflicts include, but indeed not limited to, civil wars in Angola and DRC and political instability in Lesotho, Madagascar, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Zimbabwean conflicts are contemporary yet internecine test cases a propos the competence and relevance of SADC in providing the so-called "African solutions to African problems". SADC, through its various organs has been involved in the resolution of these conflicts. Nonetheless, SADC has found itself in intricate circumstances and perceptibly unsatisfactory principally as it dealt with Zimbabwe and the DRC. The paper traces the development of conflict in the DRC and Zimbabwe. It traces the historical performance of the SADC in conflict resolution in southern Africa. It is the aim of the paper to assess SADC performance in conflict resolution in the region, particularly in Zimbabwe and the DRC.

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