Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
OUR loving God, The ALMIGHTY, created trees/forests and medicinal plants for us people — made in His image and likeness — and a gift of animals for them and us to live off the free provisions in point.
Tragically, however, humanity through hindsight has continuously engaged in acts of environmental degradation and with that potential self-annihilation through irresponsible activities that have thinned Ozone, the layer protecting Earth from the incinerating rays of the sun, with global warming now threatening the demise of humanity, animal and plant species.
Today, reports of people in some rural areas of Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the African continent, continuously holding begging bowls to the outside world for something to keep body and soul together have taken the form of recurring folktales, but that tragic situation impels humanity to act at speed or else end up in self-destruction for biting God’s Hand that provides His creations with all survival needs.
Closer to home once more, young people continue to flock from rural areas to urban centres upon completion of their education — or halfway through their schooling — for lack of financial support and/or food sustenance, but discover that pastures in towns are not as green as hoped for, and foreign destinations — where the job seekers still find the going even harder — with violence, a culture embraced by young people, an anathema back home but something some of the migrants embrace for survival and/or even bring back home upon their return.
Which is why the Second Republic Government’s mantra ”LEAVING NO ONE AND NO PLACE BEHIND” in Zimbabwe’s national development programmes rides on the other slogan: “A country is built by its own people.”
In this discourse as in a previous one last Saturday, there is a shrill need, better still a shrill imperative, for the empowerment of rural folk in marginalised areas of our country for these people to shape their destinies for both themselves and their families and our motherland at large.
This pen believes that the Government’s devolution fund specifically meant for rural areas should augment any other initiatives by our Government for the empowerment of people out there in “the sticks”, as racist white Rhodesian administrators described rural areas.
In a previous write-up in these columns, we suggested help by Government in sinking boreholes in rural homes where dams or rivers with running water do not exist so that villagers could grow vegetables for sale or for food in perennially drought-stricken areas for the folk out there to end dependence on the state for provision of food handouts.
Forests that suffer denudation by villagers for firewood to sell in urban areas, aggravating environmental degradation and climate change, should be another focus area for the powers that be to move in with innovative measures for environmental protection.
A spokesman for a Zambian government ministry set up to deal with environmental degradation challenges caused by global warming spoke earlier this week in an interview with a private Zimbabwean radio station about how that neighbouring sister state had come to grips with deforestation so that now conserved trees beneficiate Zambians in ways other than sales of firewood.
Now people in that country have adopted solar energy for cooking, heating and lighting instead of firewood, with trees now used for beekeeping and honey for sale, locally and abroad, for the villagers to replace incomes previously earned from sales of firewood.
The men said beehives were attached to trees where bees made their honey instead of in tree trunks which were cut when honey was harvested, resulting in the trees drying up and therefore becoming an environmental loss to the country.
Visits to that country by our own environmentalists to study how Zambians are protecting their trees and therefore the environment as a whole appear necessary and urgent, with IT technological connectivity with our neighbouring state and/or other nations farther abroad to learn from their successes in environmental protection cannot be over-emphasised.
Zimbabwe is home to medicinal plants such as Zumbani, which large numbers of rural folk and many other people in rural areas took to survive the Covid-19 pandemic, but that plant species remains under threat of extinction if deforestation and veld fires are not brought under permanent control.
Add to that, the Blackjack a medicine for blood pressure which is wont to be permanently wiped out if veld fires with which some people hunt or use to clear land for cultivation are not strictly controlled.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, a medical specialist from a Western country was reported to have visited Zimbabwe — and probably other African countries as well — to research plants with medicinal properties so that, no doubt, he could introduce them to save lives back home.
Above all our people in rural areas, in particular, should be made to realise the importance of conserving forests/woodlands as trees absorb, preserve or sink carbon gases from smokes spewed into the atmosphere from fires or factory chimneys and which result in global warming in the end, a phenomenon that causes devastating floods such as those experienced in Zimbabwe’s eastern areas not so long ago.
If we in this country and other people elsewhere in the world remained nailed on our laurels, a rude awakening, better still self-annihilation awaits us.
Online Reporter