The Sunday Mail
POVERTY might be common and commonplace in this part of the world, but it is definitely not normal.
It should neither be romanticised nor worn with pride as a badge of honour.
Poverty is simply a malignant disease, which seems to be endemic in Africa.
Last week, Bishop Lazarus went to great lengths to demonstrate the obscene contrast of how life is progressively returning to normal in rich countries while poor states — most of which are invariably on the continent — are plunging into the ghoulishly grim cycle of sickness and death occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.
Just as with AIDS, which was first detected in the United States of America in June 1981 but later became synonymous with Africa, the coronavirus will later similarly eventually become poor countries’ disease.
While we hunker down because of shelter-in-place ordinances prompted by a recent explosion of Covid-19 infections and fatalities, especially during the ongoing ruthless third wave that has been made more potent by low vaccination rates (with only 1 percent of Africans having been fully vaccinated), football fanatics in Europe and revellers in America are having a whale of a time as restrictions are progressively peeled off.
How can they possibly not enjoy themselves as most of their adult populations have been vaccinated?
And emerging scientific data is showing low infections, low sickness, low hospitalisations and low deaths in populations that have been immunised.
In more or less the same words used by Bishop Lazi last week, our very own billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, was thoroughly unamused by the diametrically opposed circumstances in which rich countries (read the West) and poor countries (read African countries) find themselves in the current global health crisis.
In his exasperated observations during a virtual summit on vaccine equality and equitable distribution on Tuesday, Masiyiwa, who is the African Union (AU)’s special envoy and co-ordinator of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), did not hold back.
He gave a telling and revealing account of how “those with the resources pushed their way to the front of the queue and took control of their production assets”.
“We were led down the garden path,” Masiyiwa said in a moment of epiphany, adding: “We got to December believing that the whole world was coming together to purchase vaccines, not knowing that we had been corralled into a little corner while others run off and secured the supplies.”
“The richest guys grabbed the baker!” he declared. Kikikikiki.
All that Africa needed was an equal opportunity to buy these life-saving “antidotes”.
Children of a lesser God
But should we hold these countries culpable for lives that are being needlessly lost because of vaccines that were hoarded and secreted to Western capitals?
Hmmmm!!!
Why would African countries want pharmaceutical companies in the West to waive their intellectual property rights to allow poor countries to cheaply manufacture vaccines when there is a fortune to be made?
And did they actually have any obligation, other than a moral obligation, to share with poor countries that which they invested a fortune for?
Expecting the very same people who shamelessly enslaved our ancestors and colonised our forefathers to feel morally obliged to help people who perpetually find themselves in pitiable circumstances because of these egregious historical crimes is stretching it a bit too far.
Bishop Lazi always asks his kinsmen why they think these rich countries even give a hoot about human rights, democracy and constitutionalism in African countries, as they purport to do, when they do not respect the sanctity of lives of ordinary Africans.
Why do these rich countries pity the plumage but forget the dying bird?
A critical lesson to be learnt is that countries will always look out for their own interests.
They owe allegiance to no one but their own national flags.
As long as Africa remains poor, it will forever remain trapped in pathetic situations and circumstances similar to the one it currently finds itself in, which are sadly a continuum of dark episodes that have plagued it for centuries.
Proverbs 13 verse 8 reminds us, “A person’s riches may ransom their life, but the poor cannot respond to threatening rebukes.”
Proverbs 22 verse 7 also says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”
But how can African countries extricate themselves from the seemingly unending cycles of poverty and disease?
Looking Down
Well, saying Africa is poor is inaccurate, misleading and disingenuous.
It is fabulously rich, particularly in mineral wealth.
All that is needed is to take that wealth from underground and translate it into material wealth for ordinary wananchi.
The book “The Great Betrayal: Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith”, which was published in 1997, is quite revealing.
In it, the former Rhodesian Prime Minister tells of how the US Congress Committee on Strategic and Mining sent a mission to investigate the extent of mineral wealth in countries such as DRC (then Zaire), Zambia, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and South Africa, after which it concluded that the area was “the Persian Gulf of strategic minerals of our earth”.
Instructively, we have to look down for our salvation.
It is, however, folly to brag about unexploited mineral riches without sweating them for the benefit of the people.
Fortunately, the political transition that took place in 2017 brought in a regime that is mindful of this critical fact.
This is why there has been unprecedented investments in the mining sector over the past four years.
Those who know what the Bishop knows, know that mining activities are the highest they have ever been in the country’s recent history.
The footprint by British and Chinese coal mining companies in Hwange continues to grow bigger, while Australian companies have invested in lithium, gas and oil, including methane gas.
Have those Western-sponsored non-governmental organisations (NGOs) begun sponsoring distracting headlines on environmental degradation, community disruptions and pollution yet?
Sooner or later, they will most assuredly do?
But, any time from now, the country will be hosting head honchos from Tsingshan for a series of ground-breaking ceremonies on key projects that would profoundly change the country’s economic landscape.
Among the projects is an iron ore mine in Chivhu and a carbon steel plant.
Those who have been watching the geopolitical intrigue in the Indo-Pacific region are aware that conditions can never be as propitious as they are for investments in iron ore, as China seeks alternative and secure sources of the mineral away from hostile Australia.
Iron ore prices have recently scaled record highs.
And Zimbabwe has an abundance of the resource, especially in Mwanesi in Chivhu where deposits are estimated between 30 billion and 50 billion tonnes.
Also, as Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa always says, there can never be a satisfactory industrial drive without steel.
Notwithstanding the encumbrances of political ill-will and unilateral sanctions from rich countries, Zimbabwe is slowly getting its act together.
Its successful coronavirus vaccination drive and determined march towards food security despite being denied critical aid and loans from international financiers shows how countries can leverage on their internal capacities to change their circumstances.
This is why ED has remained laser-focused on the main prize — growing the economy, and with it people’s livelihoods — despite political sideshows and drama from opposition political parties.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have reluctantly acknowledged the giant strides that are being made by Zimbabwe, which will definitely surprise many people.
As Bishop Lazarus always says, ceteris paribus (all things being equal), 2022
might possibly be a watershed year for the economy.
Those who are staking their political fortunes on an expected economic implosion might have another thing coming.
As a people, we do not have any other option but to violently reject poverty and invest every ounce of our being in saving ourselves from poverty, disease and death.
And as Strive Masiyiwa discovered, the world doesn’t owe us a living.
Bishop out!
