The Sunday Mail
SOMETIME back, Bishop Lazi recounted a story from one pleasurable, tranquil, balmy and starry night in the village when the clan was happily roasting maize cobs around a small fire.
It was harvest time and the camaraderie was quite effusive, as everyone shared stories, gossip and food.
It was all going well until the moment high-pitched blood-curdling laughs of a hyena broke the night, forcing the gathering, both the doddering old-timers and sprightly youngsters such as the Bishop, to scurry, in helter-skelter fashion, towards the nearest sanctuary, which was a rickety grass-thatched hut that was occasionally used as the kitchen.
Even the dogs, supposed to be the first line of defence against danger, joined in the melee, as they, too, bolted to safety.
The late Julius Nyerere
Trying to get through the small door proved hectic, as the gaggle of fearful villagers got stuck while jostling to outdo each other to be the first to get to safety. At that crucial moment, it did not actually matter who was left behind; it seems everyone’s topmost priority was to save themselves first.
Well, psychologists have a perfect explanation for this reaction.
They tell us that when human beings encounter what they perceive to be an existential threat, this triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to either fight or flee.
They actually call this the fight-or-flight response, though most people consider the latter option —flight — to be the most viable. Kikikiki.
We are told it is an evolutionary adaptation to increase chances of survival in threatening situations. That is why cowards usually have the good fortune to live long enough to tell tales of once brave men/women. Kikkikiki.
When Jesus was fatefully arrested while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, his disciples, with the exception of Peter, who drew his sword and tried to fight, fled and left Him to the tender mercies of his captors.
Jesus himself, who omnisciently knew He would be flogged, tortured and killed by crucifixion, agonised over his fate.
But, as was his God-ordained mission, he ultimately paid the supreme sacrifice to ensure that human beings are reconciled with the Creator.
And this is why the Easter holiday — through which the religious have been reflecting on the arrest, trial, condemnation, crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus from Thursday to today — is at the core of the Christian faith.
Considering our own frailties as human beings, being prepared to die for a cause becomes an indescribable act of courage and conviction.
John 15 verse 13 duly tells us: “No one shows greater love than when he lays down his life for his friends.”
Clearly, vicariously sacrificing one’s life for others is a sacred act that gives profound meaning to life.
It also represents a selflessness that exaltingly sanctifies one’s convictions.
Pantheon of heroes and heroines
Although life has its fair share of cowards and villains, every generation has its own pantheon of intrepid heroes and heroines who define an epoch, even if it costs their lives, helping to engender the irrepressible spirit of a nation and its people.
In this part of the world, we have a long list of nameless and celebrated heroes/heroines who shed their blood to protect our lands, culture, heritage and civilisation.
The tree of liberty in this teapot-shaped country has been watered and sustained over the years by the sacred blood of men and women whose desire was to make it a great nation.
Theirs is a story of sacrifice and triumph against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Perhaps the story of Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana (Mbuya Nehanda), who was killed on April 27, 1898 for mobilising her kinsmen and kinswomen to resist colonial occupation, is the most evocative and timeless account that defines the soul of our nation.
After being arrested and charged with offending the Crown by conspiring to kill a notorious native commissioner, Henry Hawkins Pollard, who lived near Mazowe, Mashonaland Central, Charwe was arraigned before Justice Watermayer in the High Court of Matabeleland that sat in Harare on February 20, 1898.
On March 2 the same year, she was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
However, before being led to the gallows on April 27 — after Jesuit priest Father Francis Richartz, the founder of Chishawasha Mission, failed to convert her to Christianity — she eerily made a promise: “Mapfupa angu achamuka” (My bones will rise).
This later came to pass, as her kinsmen/kinswomen would later fight their way to independence, achieving the goal that Charwe and so many of our forebears had initially sought to achieve.
Rising from the dead
But somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost our way and abandoned the struggle mid-way.
Our liberation project, which helped attain political freedom, is yet to be prosecuted to its logical conclusion, as we are still in the suffocating grip of neo-colonialism.
We (countries of the Global South) still remain what Tanzania’s late statesman Julius Nyerere — who was at one time the chairperson of the South Commission, a group of non-aligned countries determined to find solutions for countries of the South — called the “rural area of the world”.
Unfortunately, we are still caught up in the brutal vicious circle of poverty, disease and death, while the pursuit of happiness remains elusive.
Yet we seem to be content to go with the flow.
This is hardly surprising as our world view and perceptions continue to be shaped by a formidable global media that insidiously projects the West’s culture through news, literature and film.
As we commemorate Jesus’ resurrection today, we need to rise from the land of the living dead by locating our unique development trajectory within the context of a fast-changing world, both in terms of politics and economics.
This is why ED continues to talk about “Chimurenga Chepfungwa/Liberation of the Mind” as an imperative in lifting our people out of poverty and creating a prosperous future.
We obviously cannot do this if we remain blissfully oblivious of the emerging and evolving global dynamics, which are also likely to shape our future.
As we cling on to the US dollar, it is now being progressively displaced as the “lingua franca of world commerce”, as Peter Earle — an economist with the American Institute for Economic Research — called it.
ED’s administration is already stockpiling gold reserves and has since announced gold-backed digital products that will lay the foundation to buttress the Zimbabwe dollar and create a platform to handshake with the envisaged new international currency order.
The signs all around us show that the world is changing, and we need to change with it.
At a conference in New Delhi, India, a fortnight ago, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries explored the utilitarian value of nations using currencies backed by titles to minerals.
Remember, Kenya recently signed an agreement with three petroleum companies — Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and the Emirates National Oil Company (Enoc) — to buy oil using shillings in order to lessen the pressure on the country’s exchange rate in view of the US dollar shortages.
So, we need to exorcise our insatiable appetite of the greenback, which has already begun to militate against capacity utilisation in industry, which remained unchanged at 56 percent over the past year.
Although Government, through monetary authorities, has begun strategically repositioning the economy, it cannot do it alone.
Sustainable development
The maniacal drive by the new political administration to make Zimbabwe food-secure lies at the heart of creating sustainable development, which starts by feeding ourselves.
Encouragingly, after a record wheat crop last year, we should have a significant harvest from the 2022/2023 cropping season, and the fact that Government will begin supplying farming inputs to farmers for the 2023/2024 season this month is as comforting as it is transformative.
With 33,3 million hectares of the 39 million total land area in Zimbabwe capable of being used for agricultural purposes, the sector — which provides income for 60-70 percent of the population, supplies 60 percent of the raw materials required by the industrial sector and contributes 40 percent of total export earnings — can ably anchor the economy.
And only by creating value chains in the sub-sector can we create a positive multiplier effect.
For instance, why are we continuing to export relatively low-value cotton lint without using it as a raw material for clothing companies, which have demonstrable capacity to produce quality products for both the domestic market and exports
The same can be said for the mining sector, where minerals are being shipped in raw and semi-processed form to support industries and workers in far-away jurisdictions while our own manufacturing industries are floundering.
The Bishop stated earlier in the year that our bountiful lithium resources put us in good stead to be the sheiks of the new green energy revolution through the production of the much-sought-after lithium-ion batteries.
Last week, billionaire Elon Musk rightly indicated that lithium batteries are now the new oil.
We all feel the pain of climate change-induced power cuts that have been precipitated by low water levels in Kariba Dam, which have drastically reduced the hydropower plant’s power generation capacity.
But our lithium resources can help us become a big manufacturing hub for industrial green energy solutions.
And we must not squander this fortuitous opportunity.
ED has done his part by banning the export of unprocessed lithium and courting lithium battery manufacturers, but our industrialists, institutions of higher learning, innovators, among others, should step up to the plate to create whole new industries out of value chains in the mining sector.
The old world order has not worked for us and we need to leverage on the emerging new world order to accelerate our march to a prosperous future.
Bishop Lazarus will leave you with the invaluable words of Julius Nyerere, which he made in an address to leaders of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) at the International Conference Centre in Uganda on July 17, 1988.
“We buy beer — always — from the North and we sell cheap — always to the North. That imbalance is inevitable . . . What kind of business is that? But this is what is happening on the global scale. It is an unfair system. So that system, the way it is organised by the North — run by the North for the North — takes money from the South to the North. It transfers resources; it transfers wealth from the South to the North . . . So you have to change that system. The system is wrong. It is a system organised for robbery, and robbery by the rich robbing the poor. It is totally wrong. It is known it is wrong . . . We cannot live with a system like that,” he critically observed then.
But to do this we have to rise from the land of the living dead.
Bishop out!
