Online Reporter
Stephen Mpofu, [email protected]
THE headline above is undoubtedly inspiring the City Fathers of the Midlands capital, Gweru, to wage a vigorous campaign for cleanliness — both of the heart and of the environment — in order to prevent disease outbreaks, as desired by our Creator according to His Holy Book, the Bible.
Exodus 19 verse 10-14 says, “And God said to Moses go unto the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow and let them wash their clothes and be ready and on the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of the people upon Mount Sinai.”
Stated simply, God was preparing to meet the children of Israel and instructed Moses to ready them by ensuring cleanliness not only of their hearts, but also of their bodies and their camp.
In plain terms, God was not merely visiting the Israelites to deal with their enemies; He was also instructing them — as recorded in the King James Version — to deposit their human waste outside their living quarters and cover it up, thereby eliminating foul smells, flies and diseases as a means of safeguarding their health through cleanliness.
This is precisely what the Gweru City Fathers, together with their counterparts in Zambia, some cities in West Africa and the Far East, are doing to keep their urban environments clean and orderly, as desired by our Creator.
According to a health worker in Bulawayo, when a community has poor sanitation, dirty water or uncollected waste, certain diseases spread more easily. These include diarrhoea, bilharzia, cholera and dysentery — ailments that are common in urban centres today because residents are either ignorant of, or deliberately turn up their congested noses at, the virtuous saying that “cleanliness is next to godliness.”
