Precautions, precautions, laudation

The Chronicle

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

WITH Zimbabwe slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic which augmented illegal Western economic sanctions with heavy tolls on our economy and lives, respectively, a third disaster looms in the air if our country dithers on measures to insulate itself against the potential disaster — ebola now taking a heavy toll on lives in East Africa.

The ebola scurge has hit Uganda lately and has no known cure as of now.
It therefore, behoves on our health and immigration authorities to take immediate precautionary measures to prevent that killer disease sneaking its way into our country on-board travellers from that country, be they tourists or Zimbabweans returning home from abroad through the east African country where precious lives have already been lost and many more might follow before a remedy is found.

(Zimbabweans have been scattered abroad for jobs to look after themselves and their families as a result of the sanctions gobbling up economic growth and with that employment opportunities for many of our people, some of whom might right now be in the region where Ebola enjoys free reign.)

Quarantining, even for just hours at airports, people coming into this country from or via ebola-infested areas should be regarded as a necessary precaution to prevent importation of that killer disease to our country and elsewhere in southern Africa.

The adage “prevention is better than cure’’ is valid to a very large extent as it has and will forever prevent transmissions of diseases from one area to another in our global village.

Similarly parents and guardians of young children in Zimbabwe should consider themselves legally bound to present their charges for anti-polio and anti-measles vaccinations as no amount of copious tears leaving behind dry ducts will or can wash away diseases resulting from wilful custodial neglect of necessary precautions in the first place to protect the children from infectious diseases.

Also here at home another precaution is an imperative necessity, and this relates to the get-rich-quick-regardless — an operative ideology driving gold panners who are to be found in various mineral-rich parts of Zimbabwe.

Illegal alluvial gold miners are notorious for digging up riverbeds and in the process threatening the deaths of the water sources when floods deposit the sand dug up when it rains and lakes silt as a result.

With recurrent droughts due to global warming the illegal gold hunters are wont to descend en masse on riverbeds in search of the golden metal aware that no floods will disturb them.

Which means that no floods nor pools of water might be found when the rainy season is over as sources of water for people and livestock as well as wildlife.

(Unlike fireguards that are constructed around farms to prevent the spread of wild fires, there are no known sand guards along riverbanks to prevent siltations of the water sources.)

Recently gold panners were blamed for starting a fire at a farm in Esigodini which claimed the lives of those called to douse it — another sign of the recklessness of gold hunters.

Add to that story the death of a gold panner earlier this week after a Bulawayo City Council quarry pit in Parklands suburb collapsed while he and four others who escaped were searching for gold.

The body of the miner

The long arm of the law must be stretched out to deal with those who destroy the environment, on which everyone else must depend, by also hunting animals with fire or after honey by torching bees.

On a happier note laudation is due to Zanu-PF Politburo member, Colonel (Retired) Tshinga Dube, by telling, as it should be, the story of the liberation struggle against colonialism and in that way giving it the authenticity it deserves, instead of our people who went through degradation of their lives through oppressive rules by racist oppressors in power expecting their very former oppressors to pen out plausible accounts about the very people upon whom they trod.

In that respect and apart from Cde Dube’s plausible account it must go down in our history as a tragedy of tragedies for Zimbabwean historians to sit back and expect their former rulers to write accounts plausible about our black race oppressed by them in the first place.

In fact, is it not a tragic irony that a people renowned for one of the highest literacy ratings on the African continent have, with the exception of Cde Dube, and this communicologist with a forthcoming anti-sanctions title, Little Hearts Can Also Dance, have so lamentably failed to tell the history of our own liberation from white oppressive rule?
The mind surely boggles.

Article Source: The Chronicle

Enjoyed this post? Share it!