Taking cleanliness closer to Godliness

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

WITH a people’s welfare-concerned head-of-state in President Emmerson Mnangagwa anchored by a team that by and large appears to talk his talk and walk his walk, the Second Republic Government will have no valid excuse whatsoever should it fail even by election time next year to take our living conditions a niche closer to God’s desires for His people.

A mild campaign by a few leaders for the revival of a clean city status — and with that cleaner smaller towns as well — should also serve as a sine qua non for a campaign by the Church for cleaner spiritual status essential for people to walk along the right path as a demonstration of their fear of God, and not otherwise as any divergence will serve to despise God from humankind’s existence.

Which therefore suggests, in the first instance the need for a full-spirited move by the Government to clean up homesteads by replacing any imikhukhu/tangwena that exist as eyesores in rural areas with better, cleaner accommodation for the majority of Zimbabweans who live out there, and in that way reverse the periphery status assigned to the countryside by colonial Britain’s successive racist Rhodesian regimes in a bid to keep the majority of their black subjects permanently outside the boundaries of urban centres that served as homes away from home, Britain, for the whites in order for the rulers to enjoy better lifestyles regardless of whether their black subjects lived in pigsties so to speak.

Those of our people who lived through the turbulent years of white racist rule in our motherland cannot fail to concur with the views of this communicologist in this discourse above.

At the same time however, the racist Rhodesian regime did demonstrate some humane concerns by strongly deploying black health inspectors who periodically toured rural areas, giving instructions to villagers for cleaner living conditions including the planting of fruit trees for fruits with various health benefits.

However, the racist white rulers’ proviso for what might, on the face of it, appear as genuine concerns for the people’s goodness, was in fact a genuine agenda to keep blacks rusticated out there in the periphery and in that way prevent a deluge of blacks rushing, and laying siege, to civilised “white living conditions” in the towns.

Today, in our free and independent motherland, health inspectors do pay periodic inspections of living conditions in our rural areas.

However, the need to make cleanliness next to godliness should impel our Government of the people by the people for the people to mount a visible, consistent countrywide campaign for better, healthier living conditions for all Zimbabweans, be they espousers of diverse political ideologies.

As a matter of fact, if opposition political parties strongly support programmes by an incumbent Government in power to improve the lot of the people, both its supporters and members of the opposition and their opponents, all of whom are Zimbabweans after all deserving better, equal services, those parties will in that way demonstrate to the electorate their concerns for, and love for, the Zimbabwean nation as a whole as a legitime desire for an electoral victory so as to serve every Zimbabwean regardless of their political persuasions — and with that, peace and tranquility will rule the roost in campaigns prior to and during elections, localised or harmonised like the ones next year.

The Government is doing everything to grow and modernise an economy satanically embargoed by the West’s sanctions to try to remove Zanu-PF from power as punishment for introducing the land reform programme that led to the recovery of land usurped by white settler farmers in colonial Rhodesia, witness the construction of dams for irrigation purposes, drilling of boreholes countrywide to provide clean drinking water for those badly in need of that life-giving service, among other developmental projects.

However, to further improve the lot of the people, the Government might wish to consider directing more foreign investment to anchor its efforts so as to take our country to even greater heights of economic and social development for a brave new future for our people.

Also, lots of money coming in from Zimbabweans in the diaspora should help upgrade health and other living conditions countrywide, all the above positive moves telling the story of the success of the armed revolution that retrieved the motherland from foreign, racists rule serving as a roadblock to success by our black race.

When the initiatives stated above in this discourse succeed in making people live well and longer, the Church can then weigh in heavily with the word of God and convert more people to walk along the right path by fearing God — that is desisting from all forms of evil acts — as the Bible says somewhere in the book of Proverbs and in that way create conditions for their souls to enter eternity.

Or can any Zimbabwean, or other human beings elsewhere, wish anything better than ruling together with Christ when God our Creator is done and finished with the sinful world in which we live today?

Article Source: The Chronicle