Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu
IN Rhodesia before our motherland became independent and free from colonial rule in 1980 blacks endured rugged living and working conditions in both rural and urban centres while whites swaggered in sparkling conditions in their abducted new home here away from their native lands and impoverished conditions for many of them.
Gallant sons and daughters of the soil reversed the bromide with the coming of Uhuru for the black majority and it becomes no less than ingratitude for all born-frees and for the surviving born-oppressed for the child of the revolution, Zimbabwe, to parade before global eyes garbed in environmental tatters as is environmentally the case today in both rural and urban.
In the circumstances, therefore, today’s discourse is meant to pat the backs of the environmental management agency of Zimbabwe as well as our second republic government for seeing it fit to dress up both our urban and rural centres in new gowns environmentally instead of sitting back on their laurels while our country parades itself in torn clothes environmentally, in the eyes of global eyes watching us.
News on one local radio station earlier this week reported that EMA had embarked on engaging and involving people in the Midlands province’s Gokwe North, Kwekwe and Mberengwa districts in the protection of the environment in those areas with chiefs and people under their jurisdictions receiving training for environmental guardians.
Which suggests that indiscriminate chopping of trees for firewood or to clear land for the construction of homes and/or for farming and hunting with bush fire should become anathema in all of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces for the revival of our beleaguered environment.
Rural dwellers and, indeed their counterparts in the urban setup, should be taught about the important role played by trees in our lives, by absorbing and sinking dangerous gasses borne in factory chimney smokes in our industries and in veld fires which rise higher into the sky to corrode ozone, the layer that protects earth from dangerous rays of the sun resulting in droughts such as being experienced right now in some Southern African countries including our own and food shortages that people now face.
Tree planting as is being done in parts of Matabeleland province should become the norm in the rest of our country as a booster to our environment.
No EMA spokesperson was available before going to press to say what measures had or would be taken to ensure that factory chimneys in Zimbabwe’s industries are modified to limit smoke bellowing in the sky — as that which caused Bulawayo to be referred to by many as koNtuthu Ziyathunqa/the smoke that bellows and in the process causing serious environmental pollution.
Smoke from coal plants is also known to be a serious environmental pollution.
But the discourse above would remain incomplete if it did not applaud our Government for the role it is playing by ensuring that dilapidated roads are put into better conditions for all users.
This communicologist strongly believes that retention of part of the money paid to companies hired to repair dilapidated roads until the repairs pass a durability period test is a proper incentive for good work.
It therefore behooves on all Zimbabweans to act in ways that do not contribute to global warming and its catastrophic consequences for humankind while earth remains as it is before God brings it to a close along with its trials and tribulations.
Online Reporter