The Sunday Mail
HUMAN beings are creatures of habit.
They are like leopards — they never change their spots.
It is called nature.
As Bishop Lazi said before, however nature is nurtured, it will never change, and that is the nature of life.
And true to his nature, Professor Arthur Mutambara last week decided to cheaply call the Bishop a “liar” for criticising him for squandering his intellect through making superficial and seemingly unintelligent remarks about the Constitutional Amendment Bill, which was gazetted on May 7.
Call Bishop Lazarus all you want, but he wasn’t, he isn’t and will never be a liar.
You can actually take his word to the bank and use it as collateral.
Whatever he says will surely come to pass.
Sadly, Professor Mutambara will only be forever remembered for his impressive academic curriculum vitae (CV), but not for any material contribution to his people and their civilisation.
When love trumps intellect
You probably might not have heard about Nkosana Makate, but in one way or the other he might have made an impression in your life.
You see, this South African chap is the man who pioneered the “Please Call Me” service, which in this part of the world is better known as the “Please Call Me Back” service.
Far from being a brainiac trained at institutions of excellence such as NASA or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nkosana was a mere young, love-smitten accountant working for Vodacom when he had a eureka moment on November 22, 2000 to come up with a solution to help people like him who were trying to sustain long-distance love relationships.
At the time, his girlfriend — now his wife — was a student at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape.
Whenever she did not have airtime or voice credit, she struggled to communicate with Nkosana, and this is what sparked the ingenious idea.
In March 2001, Vodacom launched the service and on its first day it had more than 140 000 users.
But exactly 20 years after his brilliant money-spinning idea, he is still struggling to get compensation.
While the company is prepared to pay him R47 million, or US$3,4 million, he wants to go whole hog — he will not settle for anything less than R10billion, or US$714 million.
Argh!!! Kikikiki.
A bit ambitious, if you ask me.
As someone who was once traumatised by nuisance “Call Me Back” messages, the Bishop will not sympathise with this chap, but only wish him the best of luck against these capitalist bastards.
Oooops! Apologies for the language!
He should probably cut his losses, take the money and walk away.
However, the point that the Bishop makes is simple: He would rather respect doers and changemakers like Nkosana more than he respects useless intellectuals.
Only until Professor Mutambara uses his magnificent brain to invent something — anything! — would he be considered anything but a deadbeat intellectual in my book.
Blessed are the Doers
Over the years, we have had more than our fair share of bookish intellectuals whose forte seemed to be convening never-ending workshops and meetings, and coming up with white papers that always gathered dust in some dingy public offices.
But President ED, through his boldness, acuity, vision and, most importantly, hard work, has since flipped the script.
His obsession with detail and delivery is quite apparent.
Even at a time when he was most aggrieved about losing power, on the eve of the July 2018 elections, a sulking Uncle Bob (Cde Robert Mugabe), who threw his lot with the opposition, conceded that ED was indeed “a good worker. A very, very good worker”.
Isimbi yebasa!!!
You can never take that away from him.
Just last week, he commissioned Muchekeranwa Dam (former Causeway Dam), which is set to change lives of people who fall under the jurisdiction of Chiefs Svosve, Mangwende and Makoni through irrigation and fisheries.
It is also undoubted that the provision of potable water to Marondera and its precincts will prime it as another economic growth node that can easily support new industries.
This recently completed project should not be viewed in isolation but considered as part of a relentless continuum of transformative initiatives that are radically changing and reshaping the social order.
But changing the social order comes with a lot of upheaval.
Wait until they start complaining about pollution in Hwange or relocations from ancestral land.
This is the baggage that comes with development.
So the more the upheaval, the more the progress.
In almost every part of the country, there are transformative projects underway, be it the rehabilitation of the Binga airstrip, Bulawayo Kraal Irrigation Scheme, new coal mines in Hwange, the Gwayi-Shangani Dam that will change Bulawayo forever, the US$300 million Beitbridge Border Post makeover, the imminent Chilonga project, the Beitbridge-Harare highway project, and the new multimillion Tsingshan iron ore mine and US$1 billion steel plant that is on the horizon.
The list is inexhaustive.
Quite clearly, after more than three years of painstaking work, the economy has begun responding.
Very few people took time to heed and appreciate what Eddie Cross said last month.
“There is no doubt that this team that took over in 2017 has committed itself to fundamental and substantial changes. You can see that in the way the economy has responded, not only in agriculture and mining, not only in the recovery of international commodities,” he said.
Which is true.
Construction firm Masimba Holdings, for example, reported that its order book had significantly ballooned due to the sheer scale of ongoing economic activities in both the public and private sector.
Every other company that is similarly exposed is reporting encouraging results.
Anyone who doesn’t believe in these self-evident truths cannot be helped, as he or she is an incurable pessimist.
Cynic festival
But even as ED toils, cynics are always trying to pooh-pooh his initiatives, trivialise his accomplishments and scandalise his motives.
Even as they continue villagising our cities by turning them into unsightly wastelands and routinely fail to provide our cities with water despite dams being full, their unchangeable preoccupation seems to be on useless politicking.
However, Proverbs 6: 6-15 should put them on notice:
“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?
“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest — and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. A troublemaker and a villain, who goes about with a corrupt mouth, who winks maliciously with his eye, signals with his feet and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with deceit in his heart — he always stirs up conflict. Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant; he will suddenly be destroyed — without remedy.”
Their comeuppance will surely come soon enough, and for politicians it always comes at the ballot box.
With every progress, every accomplishment and every milestone, ED is gradually building his and ZANU PF’s election manifesto, not of promises, but successes delivered.
And the opposition, which subsists on selling crises to the electorate and perceived failure by ruling party, faces the real prospect of coming into the 2023 elections without a manifesto.
Without any ideology or coherent agenda, all they can do for relevance is rely on political showboating through frivolous court cases, fake abductions, fake bravado, ephemeral social media hashtags and nonsensical jokes about a supposed magical sceptre that has the potential of changing our economic fortunes.
It is called desperation, and it will get worse.
Remember, what the Bishop told you recently — 2022 might probably be a watershed year for this economy.
Huge projects and developments are in the pipeline and slowly coming on stream, which spells doom for sceptics.
The festival of cynics is slowly but surely coming to a painful end.
Bishop out!
