The Sunday Mail
Tobaiwa Mudede and Richard Hondo
The debate is still on, the mischief has been unravelled, read Professor Ken Mufuka’s article in the Financial Gazette of August 7-13 2014 and many other contributors in the local media.
It is now time to provide a practical guide of the alternatives that we have been putting on the table through articles in the local Press.
However, let us make one point clear right at the outset: we have no illusion whatsoever as to the size of the task before us and we also realise that the system that supports drug-driven methods of birth control in developing countries has become deeply rooted as a way of life, which bears testimony to the determination of vested interests to achieve this goal.
This is not surprising, given the millions of dollars that have been, and continue to be, poured into the system by these forces.
What we are trying to achieve is a situation where women are afforded a choice, a choice that is a lot less hazardous to their reproductive health and a choice they are made aware of.
We feel it is wrong to deny people a safer alternative to drug methods by ignoring it or by masking its existence.
After all, the idea of a free world is to provide people with free choices in matters that affect their lives and livelihoods.
The decision-makers have an obligation to put both methods on the table, with parallel publicity, and let users make their informed choices as to which way to go.
We are not naive enough to ignore the role that vested interests play in making brother rise against brother, particularly in the developing world, where poverty has become a weapon to goad people to follow a certain path to achieve a planned objective on the part of those who control the world’s wheels of fortune.
As a matter of fact Zimbabweans are not desperately poor to the extent of dying of hunger. Our own peasant farmers are the major producers of maize before and after the land reform programme.
You will never see any emaciated person, whether in rural or urban areas.
Thus the freedoms that vested interests sing about are but falsehoods designed to mask the real deal, the curtailment of people of colour through subtlety (organised in a clever and complex way).
For the benefit of those readers who missed our articles and supportive comments made by concerned Zimbabweans, let us give you a summary of the main points of worry.
The fact that vested interests are bent on curtailing the population of the darker races of the world is well documented and available for anyone to see.
It has been a design of vested interests for a long time now to scale down populations in poor countries, the so-called least developed countries.
To illustrate the point, in 1972 the then director of the US National Security Council, who went on to become the US secretary of state and was involved in attempts to broker a peace deal during Zimbabwe’s liberation war, Henry Kissinger, released a classified report detailing the need to depopulate the world.
“National Security Study Memorandum 200” states that “it is of paramount importance and national interest” to control population and promote contraception use among the least developed countries.
It is, therefore, rude, actually the height of arrogance, for senior people in these least developed countries to claim ignorance of this fact.
The report clearly stated that a growing population in the least developed countries would produce destabilising, oppositional forces against the United States.
It recommended that US leadership “influence national leaders”, and that “improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programmes by the United Nations and USAID among other tools”.
It is quite clear for whose benefit drug-driven birth control programmes in the least developed countries are being carried out.
They are being marketed as for the benefit of the national economies of the least developed countries and well-being of black women, but are they really?
How many least developed countries have made it through faithfully implementing population control programmes since decolonisation?
It is a pity really, that the bulk of the national budgets in these countries are funded by vested interests, which limits their choices in terms of national direction.
It is certainly not a question of these countries not knowing what direction is good for their nations, no.
It is in fact a question of how to fund that direction if it is at variance with that of vested interests and their agents.
The propensity for vested interests to do mischief to the darker races of the world is not a new phenomenon as amply explained by one commentator to our Press articles.
He gave the example of the Tuskegee Experiment that was carried out by the CIA on unsuspecting victims in Latin America, where the victims were deliberately infected with syphilis for study purposes!
Certain birth control drugs are being exclusively distributed for use by lower class women (invariably black) in their country of manufacture, and indigenous women in the least developed countries, for example, Norplant and Depo-Provera.
They are not offered to Caucasian women.
That is why black women in the US successfully sued the manufacturers of Norplant and were duly compensated with millions of dollars for suffering the side-effects and drug-induced diseases we have listed in our previous articles. Unfortunately, for black women in least developed countries, no such opportunity to sue will ever arise.
Traditional methods are not considered drastic enough to achieve the targets set by vested interests. This is why they must not be talked about.
We believe that throughout the ages of history, the ways of truth and justice have always won, eventually.
Spurred by the need for an alternative, we consulted widely, held numerous interviews with senior citizens, among these a very notable lady, Ambuya Hicks, reputed to be over 120 years old.
Actually, she could be older.
This noble lady was one of Mbuya Nehanda’s attendants when she was a girl of about 13. She was accompanied by her 74-year-old daughter, who helped us to interview the senior lady and got her to explain how people managed to space their children in her time.
The methods we are describing here are, therefore, not from our imagination, but straight from our sources.
We have no doubt that for most of our senior citizens these methods will ring a bell.
However, methods such as “kudarika gwenzi”, “kusungirira tambo muchiwuno” and the taking of certain oral herbal mixtures are still under our investigations.
The following methods are what we opted for, encouraged by the knowledge that they are a better alternatives to the drug-driven western methods, and certainly side-effect free.
In coming up with these alternatives, user safety was of paramount consideration and our recommendations are based on a regular menstrual cycle. For women whose menstrual cycles are irregular, we recommend the advice of their gynaecologist in order to fix their high fertility and low fertility phases more accurately.
This is extremely important if the methods described here are to be effective.
In both regular and irregular menstrual cycles, unplanned conception may occur, but then again, so, too, in drug-driven methods.
What we can guarantee with natural birth control methods is the total absence of side-effects and trauma.
It is a well-known fact in both African and Western medical science, that there exists, in the menstrual cycle of a woman, phases when there is no ovulation taking place.
The following guide is based on a fertility awareness method developed by Justisse, a Canadian organisation which blends well with our traditional methods.
A woman with a regular menstrual cycle usually experiences the following sequence of events in her 28-day cycle:
Phase One: 3-7 days, discharge of menses;
Phase Two: On average eight days after menses, where she does not see/feel mucus in her vagina/vulva. This is her lowest fertility phase;
Phase Three: Average 10-14 days after menses, she becomes aware of a “wet” or “slippery” sensation in her vulva/vagina, where she sees/feels mucus which becomes progressively more slippery, stretchy and clear. This signifies the onset of ovulation;
Phase Four: Shortly afterwards, her day or waking temperature rises, mucus disappears from the vulva/vagina, which now feels “drier” and this indicates that ovulation has taken place. This is her high fertility phase.
To be continued next week
