Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
YOU (yes you) guessed right, the instalment in today’s Saturday column is about illicit joy derived from drugs and substances as well as illicit Ordinary and Advanced Level exams results recently announced.
(Curiosa and curiosa in both cases.)
In light of the above mind-boggling issues this discourse timeously comes to bury and not to praise those students whose exam results were spiked by authorities because the candidates in point tried to open steel future doors with wooden keys in a bid to glimpse treasures hidden behind those doors, while in the other case young Zimbabweans, also boys and girls have been trying to reach a bright future Zimbabwe driving through the night in vehicles without headlights — drugs — to illuminate their way forward enroute to a brave new future for themselves and for the rest of our nation.
While 5 156 Advanced and Ordinary Level students had their results spiked the authorities shed no light as to whether the culprits broke into storerooms at their schools to steal question papers ahead of the exams and in the process forge answers to score high passes.
Neither has the public been informed of any action taken against authorities at schools in point for leaking the exam papers so that in the end the teachers would enjoy dubious public applause for their instructive expertise, nor if the culprits whose final results were nullified broke into offices where the exam papers were kept to copy questions and then study hard to score high marks and if so why were examinations meant to determine not just the future of candidates but more importantly, the future of Zimbabwe, not kept under tight security?
As things stand now, Zimbabwe’s education system, for years before and after independence renowned to produce one of the highest literacy ratings on the African continent would be lucky to not be now go down as functional literacy, the mere ability to read and right with the wide publicity given to the nullification of the results.
Worse still Zimbabwe’s industries with a high potential for foreign investment would be lucky to survive the ignominy of being regarded by otherwise potential investors as being entities run not by experts but by dubious professionals and therefore not capable of generating good returns for foreign investors’ hard-earned money.
But, of course, the indelible truth remains and it is that any foreign investment in our country will generate handsome returns for the investor — no qualms about that.
Next, widespread abuse of illicit drugs and substances by young people in this country has rightly, and timeously, generated widespread condemnation as the drugs imperil the utilitarian role that this country’s young generation must prepare itself to play for brave new Zimbabwean futures to become realities, not mere assumptions as the latter might turn out to be realities if no far reaching measures are taken not just by the powers that be but by all concerned Zimbabweans to nurture young people for a utilitarian role for a better tomorrow for all of us.
Mere verbal condemnation of drug and substance abuse will not by itself bring about transformative change as more and more youths are likely to drop out of school and marry at young age but fail to properly raise families on account of a lack of functional literacy in some cases with the result that the problem of drug abuse will continue ad infinitum.
This pen thinks strongly that foreigners who blew contraband drugs and substances into our country might be paid freelancers of Zimbabwe’s political enemies or direct colluders with those who have so far been unable to neutralise the revolutionary spirit with which those who freed our country are still imbued and so found it necessary to use drugs and substances now widely circulated in our country to destroy the young who are supposed to build the country they now own in response to the mantra that Zimbabwe is built/developed by us, Zimbabweans, who own it.
In light of the foreign devilish machinations against our hard-won independence and freedom this pen strongly believes at no other time but now it is absolutely imperative for all the people and organisations, including churches, for instance, that feel patriotically Zimbabwean to join hands against imperialists who have sleepless nights trying with the help of their local stooges to neo-colonise our motherland after failing through illegal sanctions to remove revolutionaries from power.
Churches might for instance join hands with Zimbabweans in conducting crusades in suburbs in various towns against drugs and substance abuse with parents independently demonstrating due responsibility in caring for their offspring.
It is a common truth that no challenge, local or foreign, of any magnitude is known to have defied Siamese twinned action by people and their government as long as such action enjoys God’s blessings.
Online Reporter