President Mugabe a visionary

David Chiweza
Allow me space to lend my voice to a great and strategic matter of HIV testing that the media has almost let go without giving it due consideration. As one who spent nearly 15 years researching and advocating mandatory HIV testing from the years 1992 to 2007, I would like to lend my support to the wise leadership of President Mugabe. Before the ink is dry on his visionary empowerment programme, he has yet again pulled an African first with his new call for mandatory HIV testing. Many will wonder why God will give so much life and vitality to our 89-year-old; it is these imperatives that must be dealt with.

I am and have always been convinced that God has a special purpose for President Mugabe both for economic development as well as HIV prevention. Many will remember the lone voice of the Citizens Aids Survival Trust (CAST) and President Mugabe’s stance on HIV communicated in one of his interviews which was advocating mandatory HIV testing. President Mugabe’s recent proposal for Sadc-wide HIV testing must be supported by all strategists and seers of the nation. All should jump to embrace the vision which no other leader could possibly be bold enough to spearhead, a new war and a new frontier.

NewsDay reported Monday August 19 2013 that the President’s call had raised the ire of human rights organisations. Obviously so because these are the people also opposed to CAST since its founding and have used their funded voice to blind the people of the truth. I am always and will always be convinced that the truth is stubborn and that it is immortal. After decades of denial, it is not only President Mugabe who makes this call, but it is Obama in the US who has also called for compulsory HIV testing from the age of 15 to 65. “Blog: Obama quietly institutes mandatory HIV testing (updated).”

The article read “With almost no public notice, President Obama has issued an imperial decree executive order requiring universal HIV testing”.

The human rights voice in Zimbabwe lacks original thinking and is basically a paid voice that needs to be dismissed. There are no human rights organisations that have funded themselves. The public needs be aware that these are opportunists who seize the moment as a money-spinning venture. Citizens Aids Survival Trust prides itself as having been the organisation that funded itself in its call for mandatory HIV testing as a human right. Now that Obama has also done it for the USA, it will be interesting to see how they will change their song for their pay. This kind of followership in thought and deed is what the Presidency is seeking to emancipate the people of Africa. For decades their voice has stood against the voice of reason. We are waiting to hear what they have to say about Obama’s latest move this time! On the contrary, what the local human rights organisations call a right is actually a wrong. The persons in the organisations have a short vision which believes in human rights at all costs. In their vain mental dispositions they are akin to a person who raises human rights objections to fire fighters who awaken a sleeping person when the house is on fire. They know nothing or care very little for the imminent destruction that our nation and nations in Southern Africa face as a consequence of HIV.

The whole society lives under a death formula. There is what the Bible said “death in the pot”, where the probability of infection is higher than the probability of survival. The whole HIV prevention programme and strategy is a farce and a time-wasting venture (kutandara) while nursing a pandemic like HIV. Typical short-sightedness and forgetfulness and oblivion will see the nation overtaken by the disease in 50 years’ time. The early HIV pandemic had threatened to reverse the freedom of Southern Africa through deaths; repeat of the history of the natives of America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand whose populations dwindled due to diseases while the white population increased. Africans must now open their eyes and realise that they need to think for themselves. Their HIV environment is clearly not the same as that of other nations in the North. The existence of anti-retroviral drugs has reduced this threat as more people live longer. However, there have been no proper studies made to demonstrate whether this problem has been eliminated. Even if life expectancy increased marginally, should a nation be comfortable with dependence on drugs for survival? Having every citizen on life support is hardly what we can call a healthy nation.

This clearly plays into the hands of drug manufacturing companies, which a playing games with lives of people for profit. At a time when Africans are taking control of their economy, short-sighted persons may celebrate these victories only to hand back their victory through death by HIV.
Whatever your beliefs are, President Mugabe deserves the support of all who see, for our freedom, nationhood and wealth can only be guaranteed through a healthy nation.

Just in case you thought the battle is over, it’s time to fasten your seat belts and press on with the struggle for socio-economic and political survival. With these challenges and with so much timid leadership in the world, the bold and indispensable leadership of President Mugabe becomes even more evident.

David Chiweza is a retired army Brigadier General and author of the book “HIV and AIDS, The Last Stand, The Total Strategy for the Annihilation of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe and the Rest of the World” (1997). In 2000 he founded the Citizens AIDS Survival Trust (CAST) and is Current Author of “Out of the Rabble”, Ending the Global Economic Crisis by Understanding the Zimbabwean Experience (2013).