The Sunday Mail
This is the third and final instalment in a series of articles by Tobaiwa Mudede and Richard Hondo on why they oppose certain birth and population control methods.
We are not advocating enhanced fertility here. No. We are saying let nature take its course as God intended when He created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
We are saying let parents use the agency of nature to space their children when planning their families, without the need to burden women with drug-induced diseases.
Our worry is not so much what Professor Marvelous Mhloyi believes.
No. Our worry is the silence of our women’s national organisations regarding the danger their members are exposed to by these drugs. If we are looking for a practical answer to this problem, it will come from this quarter, assisted perhaps by well-meant professionals in their midst.
We know that there are such professionals among women. We just do not understand why they are silent about such an important matter.
Are they being muffled by vested interests, or is it a resigned lack of interest, knowing the odds lined against them?
Prof Mhloyi appears to be trying to whip up gender emotions in this debate, to make us look like monsters bent on ruining the advancement potential of women. We believe that if the current drug-driven birth control methods allow women to pursue education or careers to their full potential, natural birth control methods can do even better, and without making women pay a heavy price with their health, exactly as God intended.
We do not know why the professor sees danger in natural ways of controlling births and not in drug-driven ways, as in both cases husband and wife have to agree on the need to space their children, if spacing is her only worry.
Perhaps our bigger pictures are different, which would explain the gulf that is between us.
This is understandable, naturally, because people do differ, and differing is not a crime in itself. Rather, it shows minds at work.
Yes, the President said national leadership, political parties and national development all hinge on the power of the people. But he did not say on the wealth of the people, unless the good professor is equating small families with power, and what power would she be talking about?
Throughout the ages of history, it is people who created wealth. It has never been a question of wealth creating people.
No people, no wealth, simple. Before Prof Mhloyi’s small families can have their large disposable incomes, people must create them first.
For people to create wealth, they need a spread of skills. The more the people, the greater the skills spread, and the greater their capacity to exploit the raw resources at their disposal. It is called specialisation and is known for its efficiency.
This is why Prof Mhloyi is good in her line qualification and may not be as good in other pursuits like medicine, for example.
Another person would be needed for this, and if the country has none, it is forced to import the skill.
That means wealth leaving the country, please note. Small families can never ensure a workable skills spread, obviously.
Africa is poor in a sea of abundance because it is importing the various skills needed to exploit its natural resources.
Yes, when the imported skills do their work, Africa can make sales and realise an income.
But, please note, the way international trade is skewed, after paying for the skills and other overheads, the net income accruing to Africa is often negative, because the skills costs usually outweigh the inflows.
So, while small families may have more income to themselves, their country will continue to bleed this way. The policy of small families will ensure that those countries that have surplus skills will continue to live off Africa. This is the bigger picture we are trying to illustrate.
It is indeed a tragedy that the educated among us are blinded to this picture. A country needs a large gene pool to create varied skills in succeeding generations. You don’t get this with a skeletal population, regrettably. Prof Mhloyi is underplaying the effect of the influx of refugees in the country.
In terms of agreements governing refugees in Africa, a country cannot force refugees to return to their countries, even after the danger they ran away from has been removed. This means that resources have to be found to meet their needs in the host country.
And in the end, the refugees become part of the population and statistically important in per capita calculations. So, while we are putting the “small family, better life” theory into practice, the refugee population is occupying the vacuum we are creating. For whose benefit shall this be?
Clearly, the theory does not provide a tomorrow for its citizens. If anything, it forces people to make sacrifices for the benefit of other nationals.
So, people may find it difficult to accept sacrifices if they do not see a benefit accruing to their country at the end of it. It is just not on this!
One question may arise, yes, the question of when do we enforce a one-child family like China is doing.
Our answer is simple. It is the same as when you are eating your supper. When do you stop?
When your tummy feels full, that is when. But even when this time arrives for Zimbabwe, the answer is not coercing women to use disease-inducing drugs.
That is not what China is doing. Natural ways will still be preferred.
Contrary to what Prof Mhloyi is saying, we do not foresee a situation where Government is forced to dish out material assistance to families as a result of the natural growth of the population we advocate.
Even Nigeria is not doing this.
It would appear that this is part of the fear factor angle she is using to ensure that the drug-driven birth control programmes remain in place, even when these drugs have been withdrawn from the market in their country of manufacture after affected women successfully sued for damages as explained earlier.
We find the good professor’s argument very hard to understand. If it was a commodity, it would make a very hard sell indeed!
We have had common radio interviews on the matter of purportedly withdrawn birth control drugs, such as Norplant, with a medical doctor as part of the panel. The medical doctor assured us that the drug Norplant had been withdrawn from circulation in Zimbabwe 10 years ago, after we queried him.
However, women who phoned in stated that Norplant was, in fact, still being prescribed and one of the women had hers implanted only a couple of weeks before!
That told us something, that the authorities are not aware these drugs are still finding their way into the country.
The doctor concerned was from the Family Planning Council of Zimbabwe. We believed him as we knew that Norplant had been withdrawn from the market in its country of manufacture following the litigation we have referred to earlier.
What this means is that the manufacturer is still making this drug and shipping it to countries like Zimbabwe.
Now, if a banned drug still circulates in a country, it would suggest that a black market for the drug exists in that country, and a black market does not flourish without the involvement of influential people to protect it.
That would explain the resistance to natural ways of birth control that we see. If this analysis is true, then we can only draw the attention of the medical practitioners who are still prescribing this drug to the fact that they have a compelling professional duty of care to assist getting the drug out of circulation in Zimbabwe.
They owe it to their patients, some of whom may not even know that the drug is a banned product now and is being given to them illegally.
But most importantly, women organisations need to query this unofficial circulation of a banned drug, or at the very least, educate their members about the danger they face in the use of it, and to remind the members that they have the right to say no!
There is no law, as far as we know, that compels women to use disease-inducing birth control drugs if they have no wish to.
