Trump and Musk are doing the Lord’s work

Growing up in the village exposes one to the beauty, mysteries and wonders of nature.

For a young Bishop Lazi, who was raised in the hellishly hot climes and snake-infested plains of Buhera, the sacred land of the Vahera, one of the rarest and most inexplicable natural phenomena was coming across a snake eating another or biting itself.

Such once-in-a-lifetime encounters were so unfathomable that they were often interpreted in mythical terms.

And such a phenomenon has fascinated humanity for millennia.

It led to the development of an ancient symbol, the ouroboros, which depicts a snake eating its own tail, and is thought to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth.

They say the word “ouroboros” comes from a Greek word that literally means “tail devourer”.

Scientists, however, claim it is not uncommon for snakes to eat other snakes, including members of their own species.

There are also various reasons proffered — ranging from reasonable to outlandish — on why snakes sometimes bite themselves.

Some argue that when wounded, the reptiles, because they neither have arms nor legs, resort to biting themselves in a desperate bid to ease the pain.

Others claim confusion, stress, pain or poor eyesight can lead these reptiles to mistake their own tail for prey.

Either way, all this shows the peculiarities of nature, which we can only begin to understand through divine revelation and grace.

A snake eating a snake

Bishop Lazi found himself reflecting on this rare phenomenon after the recent political spectacle of the maverick Donald Trump and his South Africa-born billionaire lackey Elon Musk cannibalising USAID, which they believe is a “criminal organisation”.

Well, folks, this organisation, which has succeeded in masquerading for the past 61 years as an angelic agency on a righteous worldwide mission and crusade to offer aid and development assistance, has actually done more harm than good in this part of the world.

That it was founded by John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War pitting the United States-led Western bloc against the Soviet-led Eastern bloc tells us all we need to know about its foundational mission, content and character as an insidious weapon and tool against Washington’s adversaries.

In essence, owing to its reach and influence, it became a camouflage that provided convenient cover for covert agents to carry out malign activities against its enemies and also launder their image as humanitarian workers on a messianic mission to save the world.

As Matthew 7 verse 15 warned, these were actually ravenous wolves that came in sheep’s clothing.

Those who suffer from amnesia might have forgotten that sometime early last year, four American spooks — Brenda Lee Pearson, Norma Kriger, Sarah Logan and Loretta Bass (contracted by USAID) — sneaked into Zimbabwe to hold unsanctioned and covert meetings, which were designed to inform Washington’s adversarial foreign policy towards Harare.

The quartet, in flagrant disregard and violation of established protocols, went on to nicodemously hold meetings with leaders of anti-government civic society organisations, journalists, some senior opposition figures and Western diplomats.

Unbeknown to them, all the while they were being monitored by our men and women in the shadows.

When they discovered they had been outed, they scrambled to contact local authorities in order to sanitise and regularise their mission.

As a people who do not suffer fools, we duly rounded up the spies and deported them back to the US on February 17.

This is just but one example among countless subversive activities that we have suffered at the hands of this organisation.

As Trump and Musk (bless them), themselves not being individuals given to subtleties, continue to unmask and pry open USAID, exposing some activities that have been hitherto hidden from the world, we now get a deeper understanding of what this agency has been up to all these years.

We now know, for instance, that the British propaganda broadcasting arm, BBC, received approximately US$3,2 million during the 2023-2024 period.

Politico, an American political digital newspaper company, also received about US$34,3 million from USAID last year.

Wait, there is more.

Reporters Without Borders claims the agency funded 6 200 journalists, 707 non-state media outlets and 279 media-focused non-governmental organisations in more than 30 countries in 2023.

No doubt, some shadowy media organisations in our teapot-shaped Republic also benefitted from this “generosity” by Washington.

In fact, for this year, the US foreign aid budget allocated US$268,4 million to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.

We are told that such largesse from the benevolent USAID was ostensibly meant to provide training and support to “strengthen independent media”.

Phew!

Was it not John Pilger — that Australian journalist, writer and journalist (may his dear soul rest in revolutionary peace — who told us that “information dominance” and “control of the narrative”, led by “corporate and media class warriors” succoured by the West, are the West’s “most powerful weapon”?

So, while our media flounders under the overbearing weight of a new media landscape that is now increasingly defined, dominated and shaped by Big Tech companies (Facebook and X, among others), the West constantly buttresses its own, including subcontracting some voices from amongst us, in order to shape — often through misinformation and disinformation — its own narratives and world view. Of late, we have seen how the US is sponsoring the narrative that Afrikaners are being persecuted by the South African government. Kikikikiki.

This lie is now being used to justify the freshly minted sanctions on Pretoria.

As Zimbabwe, for the past 25 years, we have been living under a dark cloud of misinformation and disinformation carefully curated to cast us as a pariah.

The great revelation

But the truth cannot remain hidden; it always finds a way of coming out.

Luke 8:16-18 says: “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore, consider carefully how you listen . . .”

The furore around USAID is a godsend insofar as it convinces the Doubting Thomases that Harare’s two-decade-old gospel that some, if not most, of the so-called human rights activists, opposition political parties and media were nothing more than puppets of the US, through USAID.

In a seeming moment of epiphany, lawyer Tawanda Nyambirai raised critical questions that most fair-minded Africans should now be asking.

“The disclosures being made about the activities of #USAID in regime change in #Mexico and the funding of activities meant to undermine foreign sovereign states in Sub-Saharan Africa in the guise of globalisation and democracy will lead to the following questions: 1. Is the USA not being exposed damages suits at international law for harm caused due to admitted interference in the affairs of other sovereign states? 2. To what extent do these disclosures betray local democratic movements in Sub-Saharan Africa as puppets/agents of USA foreign policy? 3. Will the USA be able to regain respect and trust as a leading force for democracy? 4. How can one tell the difference between genuine pro-democracy foreign policy initiatives of the USA and those policies intended to advance American imperialism?”

Food for thought.

So, Trump and Musk are really doing the Lord’s work.

What next

But it has to be remembered that Trump and Musk are not doing political evangelical work to save the world.

What essentially the duo is doing is to launch a determined assault on one of the sanctuaries of America’s deep state, which fought tooth and nail to prevent his presidency.

USAID is just collateral damage.

It is akin to a snake eating another snake.

America’s foreign policy interests and goals will remain the same.

For people such as the Bishop and his ilk who have been calling out regime change agents and machinations, we now have a high moral ground, as we have always had.

In Hungary, which over the years has been on the receiving end of a phalanx of motley regime change activities and NGOs, Viktor Orbán has since announced that he will take legal action to get rid of them, as well as media outlets operating in the country that receive funding from the US and other international sources.In 2023, Orbán launched the Sovereignty Protection Office to investigate organisations and media outlets that were doing the bidding of foreign powers.

“All money coming from America should be made public, and those who receive it should have sanctions enacted against them,” Orbán said on Friday.

“You cannot accept money from abroad in order to influence Hungarian politics, and this will be legally enforced. Those involved will face legal consequences . . .

“We are talking about a dark thing here . . . Brussels, the Soros foundation, the US budget, they have channelled big amounts of money with a political purpose into the political life of certain countries . . .”

This should strengthen our resolve to push through the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Bill.

We cannot just fold our hands and look in the wake of such public confirmation of unbridled mischief.

We cannot!

Bishop out!