Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
Covid-19, humanity’s number one enemy rampaging across the globe does not give off signs of relenting any time soon for anyone worldwide, including Zimbabweans, to heave a sigh of relief.
If anything, it is wont to appear and reappear in different forms of combat, as it has already done so through the variant Omicron, and so potential victims of the virus must strategise so as not to be taken by surprise as what appears to be the case with the new variant reportedly discovered by South African scientists, putting countries in Southern Africa including Zimbabwe on the blacklist of countries in the West, for instance.
If anything, now is the time for rearmament against any surprise mutations by the coronavirus and girding ourselves by taking booster vaccine shots, as what President Emmerson Mnangagwa and members of his Cabinet did recently should be seen by all as the way forward, rather than a mere game of make-believe.
Which therefore calls for not only frontline workers to receive a third jab but for practically everyone across the country to prepare for any further new variant rearing its ugly head and claiming unprotected lives.
It therefore appears paramount for Zimbabweans to cooperate with health workers to achieve herd immunity in both urban and rural communities.
That vaccinating everyone against the Covid-19 pandemic appears difficult in urban areas where people are daily inundated with communication through newspapers and electronic media in the form radio and television, suggests that greater efforts be made to saturate rural dwellers, some of whom have no access to political, social or economic information through the media in point mentioned above.
Devolution now in purview, should compel parliamentarians with seats in rural areas as well as traditional leaders to join hands in ensuring that every rural dweller receives information about the benefits of vaccination, booster shots included, against the coronavirus in the same away that the villagers previously treated by racist colonialists as “periphery-dwellers” should receive information about social and economic development to take the motherland into a brave new future for all.
Some people in the communal lands pull spans of oxen to plough their fields.
The villagers then cooperatively cultivate and harvest the crops and later thrash the corn together while frothing calabashes of beer wait lined up for the villagers to drink during or after eating their meals together.
In Covid-free times people in the “periphery”, as colonial racists pejoratively described rural areas, gathered together had no need to take precautions against the spread of disease as it has now become imperative with Covid-19 with the World Health Organisation prescribing protocols to be adhered to for protection against the pandemic.
Equally important in protecting rural dwellers, security forces should form a wall of Jericho along our common borders to prevent Zimbabweans living and working in neighbouring countries thumbing their noses at official entry points to jump borders as they return home with the infected among them becoming super-spreaders of Covid-19 in their homes and in urban areas where they might visit friends and relatives.
Covid-19 at present loomS large as the greatest threat to lives and development and therefore to the human race as a whole.
Thus, for people to ignore measures by the Government to fight the deadly virus as a way of treasuring life, which God values very much, is not short of sleep-walking into our demise as God’s creation.
Online Reporter