Bright Rays of Hope after Covid-19

Stephen Mpofu

On the warm ashes of the devastating Covid-19 world pandemic that some around the globe read as a sign of the end of the world — and through which Zimbabwe hobbled after this country’s economy and independence cheated mortal death at the hands of the imperialist West with its illegal sanctions to try to effect regime change as a reprisal for land reform — bright, new rays given off by a sun of hope are wont to illuminate flurries of activity in various parts of the globe to catalyse political, economic and social renaissances in the post-coronavirus era to take new generations into a brave new future.

The stimuli in point in this discourse will obviously vary from country to country but patriotic fronts will obviously be in vogue in different nations as circumstances require.

In our own country patriotic fronts that are already germane, no doubt inspired by the patriotic front of PF-Zapu and Zanu-PF at the height of the liberation struggle and which helped Zimbabweans wrest power from colonial Britain, should serve as an engine for economic and social revamps after slumps caused by the satanic economic lockdown.

Monetory and various other material assistance donated by different companies and churches in our country typify a typical patriotic front between the donors and the Government in the fight against the coronavirus in order for economic and social normalcy to be restored.

Add to the locally-brokered patriotic front the Chinese team of medical experts now in the country to help Zimbabwe overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and you (yes, you) have an unmitigated till-death-do-us-part relations between the people of China and Zimbabweans on the one hand and China the country through which the world had a first glimpse of the ugly head of the coronavirus and Zimbabwe the country on the other — relations which if emulated around the globe would result in what is truly a global village where no one throws food leftovers into the rubbish bin while their neighbour spotting dry lips and a shrunken belly watches helplessly.

This pen does not suggest that organisations or companies should give away all that they have, like trees that produce fruits, all of which are eaten by other people but that they should contribute to the fight against the deadly coronavirus.

Here at home individuals and their leaders might also seriously wish to consider bracketing their different ideological persuasions and form patriotic fronts with the Government in the fight against crime, especially in the wake of hundreds if not thousands of Zimbabweans being deported from neighbouring countries where some of them may have committed various crimes.

Members of such fronts will obviously know those of their political members or relations who fled the country after committing crime and are thrown back home by their host countries as deportees.

They might or might not have changed their identity while in exile but fellow Zimbabweans in patriotic fronts in question will know their true identity and the kinds of crimes that made them flee the motherland and should therefore expose them to law enforcement for the offenders to receive their just deserts and in that way forestall further crimes by the lawless individuals in question especially in urban areas where jobs are hard to come by as a result of the current, virtual economic slump.

As we previously feared in these columns, some returnees afraid of being identified for crimes committed, and not wishing to be quarantined, may opt to steal back into the country across unguarded border areas along bush tracks to hide in the villages where they might engage in various criminal acts to make ends meet in the absence of income paying programmes to sustain them.

This writer exhorts members of different political parties, leaders and chiefs and members of parliament in the rural constituencies to form patriotic fronts that will serve as sieves through which to run all the returnees in order for the chuff around them to be referred to our justice system where criminals elements among those people are to face the music as the case might be.

Also, financially well-to-do companies might partner government in implementing some projects to create employment for the jobless or to start skills-training programmes for jobless young people to help them secure employment and in that way avert their resorting to crime to keep body and soul together.

The slogan “one Zimbabwe, one nation” should be read as a statement exhorting our people to resonate with the message that rings true through the Holy Bible to the effect that people, created in His own image, should love one another in the same way as they love themselves. But not only that. He went ahead to demonstrate the kind of love He meant by sending His only begotten son to the world that He so loved, our world, that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ should not die but have eternal life.

Unfortunately, as things stand in our country and elsewhere around the globe, life resembles a musical score riddled with discords — and Jehovah the Almighty is not amused at all by the things that tarry His ubiquitous sight.