A democratic government is a government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by the whole population. In democratic governments, there is personal liberty and conduction of free elections. On the other hand, an authoritative government is that which a manipulative and robust leader rules. Usually, authoritative regimes have a low democracy index, implying that personal liberty and the freedom of carrying out free and fair elections for the people to decide their leader are limited. Leaders in such a kind of government often make decisions without consulting anyone. However, this tends to be useful when that country is facing an emergency.
An example of a country with an authoritative mode of governance in Africa is Sudan. Currently, Sudan is run by the Prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, who was appointed by the Sovereignty Council of Sudan. He took over from the authoritarian President Omar al-Bashir, who was removed from power on the 11th of April 2019. The autocratic leader who has been in power for nearly 30 years, was a very ruthless tyrant who usually used unrestrained violence. He even attempted to extinguish a rebellion in the south with a bloody war, prompting the ICC to provide an arrest warrant for him. This marked the end of his reign, making the people of Sudan be at peace at last.
On 12/ 01/ 2020, the World Health Organization confirmed that a respiratory illness called the coronavirus has emerged in China, and it was the cause of the deaths of many people in Wuhan City, China. On the 13th of March 2020, Sudan reported its first COVID-19 case in Khartoum, where the man who had died the previous day, had visited the United Arab Emirates in March’s first week. Since then, one more person has died, and 15 have tested positive for the virus. This number of confirmed cases and deaths is smaller compared to other nations where thousands have been infected and died, implying that the measures that the country has put in place to curb the virus are intact. Some of the measures the government has used include a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am, the closure of schools, staff reduction in key government offices, and banning of public gatherings.
Conclusively, authoritative regimes deprive the citizens of their freedoms and rights as opposed to the democratic ones. The move that the people of Sudan made to remove the autocratic leader from governance was appropriate as it opened doors for democracy. I think that this attained democracy might be one of the reasons as to why the country can keep the threat of the coronavirus pandemic at bay.