The Sunday Mail
Do you still remember what the Bishop has been prophesying from the beginning?
He hopes you still do!
We will definitely inherit a different world order when the coronavirus finally runs its course.
While the pandemic has shown us that as human beings we might be closer to extinction than we think, the conflict in Ukraine is yet another eloquent illustration of how the human race continues to inexorably hurtle towards a man-made apocalypse.
Harare might be more than 10 000 kilometres from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital – ground zero of the festering conflict between Russia and the West — but ordinary Zimbabweans, like everyone else around the world, have begun to feel the contagion effect of this geopolitical power-play, as fuel prices continue to discomfortingly march northwards.
It will naturally make life difficult for everyone.
This is the unavoidably extortionate price we all have to pay in a world that has been inextricably linked by a phenomenon that we were told was called globalisation.
We haven’t even begun pricing in the observable and demonstrable effect of climate change, which is making weather conditions ludicrously unpredictable.
You see, there is nothing sexy, romantic and nostalgic about violence, conflict or war.
As Bishop Lazi always says, it is only a generation that has not seen war that glorifies and even cheers it, but a generation that has lived through conflict would never wish to go through another one.
Those fortunate to survive it are unfortunate enough to carry the curse of its gory and ghastly experiences to the grave.
Haunting images of the dark underbelly of violence, which are wrought by war, can timelessly scar your conscience and stain your soul. You might have heard the story of one of the fierce guerrillas of the Second Chimurenga, Cde Wereki Sandiyani, who hailed from Dotito, Mashonaland Central.
In 1975, Cde Sandiyani, whose nom de guerre was Phillimon Gabela, was captured in Mutoko after being shot during an unsuccessful operation to attack Rhodesian soldiers who were camped at Katsukunya School in Mutoko. He was heinously flogged by his captors to such an extent that at one time they tossed him into the mortuary believing he was dead.
When he came to, his ordeal continued.
In what could amount to senseless callousness, the Rhodesians decided to heartlessly amputate his injured legs by hacking them off using a hacksaw.
To make the whole procedure as unbearably painful as possible, they didn’t even give him an anaesthetic.
After being amputated, he was caged, only to be released after Independence in 1980.
Cde Sandiyani, just like many other veterans who survived the liberation struggle, carried these scars until he breathed his last on September 26 last year.
Well, these are the unconscionably barbaric depths that war can reach.
You won’t know the value of peace until you lose it, but by then it would be hard to recover.
Merchants of Violence
Peace is seriously undervalued; if you doubt it, ask the Libyans.
Before 2011, they lived in peace and relative prosperity, but after the Arab Spring — a wave of demonstrations that were purportedly supposed to democratise much of the Arab world, particularly North Africa and the Middle East — Libya has not known peace, but bloodshed.
Isaiah 32:17 says: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”
2 Corinthians 13:11 actually sues for peace: “Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.”
And Matthew 5 verse 9 tells us emphatically that peacemakers are children of God: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
So, if the effect of righteousness is peace, what is the effect of wickedness?
And, if peacemakers can be called children of God, what will warmongers and agitators be called?
However, what we know is whenever and wherever there is conflict, violence or war, the United States of America and its posse of allies are not usually far behind.
From Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Zimbabwe — yes, Zimbabwe — to Ukraine, Washington’s shadow looms large.
You can even trace the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine to the toxic and pervasive influence that the US exercises over both Ukraine and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).
The Bishop told you last week that the intransigent regime in Ukraine led by youthful comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy was spawned by active destabilisation campaigns in Eastern Europe that were driven by Washington, as it sought to expand its sphere of influence to Russia’s doorstep.
Again, courtesy of the Guardian’s former Europe editor, Ian Traynor, we can now authoritatively claim that the US’s regime change agenda in countries such as Georgia, Serbia, Ukraine and Belarus, among others, was largely driven by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) influenced by the Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US State Department and USAid, including Freedom House and Hungarian billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
A similar pattern has been observed in Latin America and Africa, where Washington has for decades been actively seeking to assert its ideological, social, political, economic and cultural hegemony.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which at some point variously bankrolled organisations such as ZESN (Zimbabwe Election Support Network), MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa), ZLHR (Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights) and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, is notoriously known around the world for promoting US-backed regime change, especially after the scandals that tainted the CIA in the 1970s.
PVO Bill
As a country that has been similarly targeted, Zimbabwe is also all too familiar with these covert shenanigans and of late has been trying to sever the overreaching and outsized tentacles of some meddlesome NGOs and civil society groups by ensuring they are not conveniently used as Trojan horses.
The Private Voluntary Organisation (PVO) Amendment Bill is partly meant to do exactly that.
While it seeks to protect NGOs from being used as cover to finance terrorist activities in line with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), it is the proposal to prevent NGOs and civil society groups from meddling in politics — through Clause 5 of the Bill — that has made the industry and Western embassies increasingly fretful.
The media has not quite been able to reveal the drama associated with ongoing public hearings. In Masvingo, for example, consultations were prematurely abandoned on March 1 after a fistfight broke out, while in Mashonaland Central some participants made a spectacle by symbolically shredding the document. You do not need to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to establish that some of the discordant voices are being sponsored by the same NGOs to manufacture outrage against the Bill.
They are even sponsoring newspaper articles to attack the proposed legislation.
When you are attacked by warmongers and agitators, you should know that you are onto something. Quite recently, the Human Rights NGO Forum in collaboration with the Southern Defenders and Accountability Lab published a report titled “Punching Holes Into a Fragile Economy — The Possible Economic Impact of the Private Organisations Amendment Bill”, which claimed the sector could possibly shed more than 18 000 jobs if the Bill is passed.
How that could happen was never explained. You would be tempted to think the proposals in the Bill are outrageously out of the ordinary, but they are not.
In Egypt, the Ministry of Social Solidarity and Justice registers and licences NGOs and monitors their budgets and activities as stipulated by the Law on Community Associations and Foundations.
Likewise, in China, Article 47 of the PRC NGO Law prohibits the organisations from inciting resistance to the
implementation of laws; illegally obtaining state secrets; creating rumours, engaging in defamation or the publication or dissemination of other harmful information that endangers state security or damages the national interest; engaging in or funding political activities, or illegally engaging in or funding religious activities, among many other transgressions.
This is even common in countries where “blue-eyed”, “middle class” and “civilised” Europeans live. Kikikiki.
As recent as 2017, Hungary, a member of the European Union that had previously accused George Soros of using NGOs to push foreign interests in Budapest, passed a law that requires organisations receiving 23 000 euros per year from outside the country to register as foreign-funded organisations and report personal details of each donor.
Failure to do so results in dissolution of the organisation. Earlier in October 2013, Poland, another member of the bloc, established a National Freedom Institute, which took over the responsibility of administering national funds for NGOs.
This was envisaged to ensure that they couldn’t stray from their mandate by dabbling in politics and being used to systematically undermine the government.
Of course, Harare’s fears, which are obviously shared in other jurisdictions around the world, are well-founded.
In January this year, more than 23 civil society organisations jointly published a statement railing against Chinese investments in the mining sector.
It was typically one of those xenophobic and Sinophobic hatchet jobs that are in line with Washington’s foreign policy to undermine China’s influence around the world.
Attacks on the Chinese by local NGOs have been particularly vicious over the past year. Again, we have also recently seen coordinated and systematic attacks on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) as part of a broader plan to soil the 2023 elections before they have even begun.
The attacks will grow worse and hysterical as we draw closer towards the elections.
It is exactly such misadventures that stir up conflict. Back in the village, we learnt that kids mustn’t be allowed to play with fire, lest they burn down the whole village.
Well, Zimbabwe has never been, is not and will never be a playground for forces that seek to undermine its sovereignty and national interests.
Not then! Not now! Not ever!
Bishop out!
