The blind are leading the blind

Dr Timothy Stamps
There are two other forms of government: monarchy and dictatorship. Currently, the best known monarch is Queen Elizabeth II who turned ninety this year. Dictators like Stalin and Hitler were the other form of government.

In 1865, Bagehot, after observing what was going on, said the duty of a monarch was to advise, guide and warn. Edmond Burke in 1650 said, “Those who choose not to remember history are doomed to repeat it.”

It is widely accepted that one of the front runners, Clinton or Trump, will win. But the two front runners are the most unpopular candidates in almost 200 years since Andrew Jackson, with no agenda, became president of the United States. Since I am in Zimbabwe, I’m not concerned specifically with who wins but I am concerned about America’s effect on poor little Zimbabwe. I shall, therefore, attempt to outline the policies in America and how they affect Zimbabwe.

Stalin, a strong Soviet leader, wept in 1932 when his wife shot herself dead with a pistol he had given her as a Christmas present. His colleagues said to him: “Why does this one death concern you so much when you can kill thousands at random without even knowing their names?”

Stalin replied: “One death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic.” The truth of that saying persists today for each and every Zimbabwean, especially concerning the latest hero, Cephas George Msipa, whom the whole nation —from the President to the lowest member of our society — mourned, even though he differed in some respects with our President and our policies.

Let me now turn to how international statistics affect Zimbabwe. America, by universal agreement, is the authority on the statistical measure for every aspect of human life, including health. For example, take the statistic and the method of calculating it on human pregnancy. They deliberately kill one-third of their foetuses but ignore that in calculating the statistical number of successful deliveries of living babies.

Yet, surely, the object of a statistical analysis of pregnancy is the successful outcome of each pregnancy by delivery of a normal, healthy child about nine months later. To arrive at the statistical result, they ignore the aborted foetuses, which as I said, are about one-third of all pregnancies, and only compare the end result. Is that a fair analysis? Therefore, in my view, the statistical analysis is fundamentally flawed.

Take another statistic: homosexuality. They have emphasised the sanctity of a marriage of being a man and woman joining together in holy union and to this extent under George W Bush, they have put a law named The Defence of Marriage Act. Yet under a newly invented word, they defend unnatural unions between people of the same gender, and call people like us homophobic.

To me the word is new, but I think it might originate from Greek or Latin. Thus we are pilloried for “being behind the times” in not accepting unnatural human behaviour. Oscar Wilde called it “love which dare not speak its name”.

Taking another example: the so-called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) by nuclear war. They ignore or treat as trivial the threat of a country like North Korea or Russia starting the process, because in the words of both leading candidates for the current general election in America, “ the possibility is remote and easily arrested before the actual event”.

In this respect they still have no concern about Zimbabwe and any input we might give on moral grounds at least. Take another example. We are currently grappling with our economy, trying to get it back on track with the help of the Staff Monitored Programme of the IMF. Yet the IMF is responsible for getting the whole of Africa into trouble with the ESAP (Eternal Suffering for African People).

So it is a body like a blind buck shot in flagrante delicto — the blind leading the blind. Are we, in Zimbabwe, to use the people who got us into the mess at the outset (25 years ago before we accepted ESAP, the Zimbabwe economy was doing well). Are we, therefore, doomed today to retrace our steps through the same mess as we have already been through? Is there no other way forward? I aver that there is but we have to have the confidence, nationally, that we can find a way forward on our own.

Our Shona people, before the English stole their land, believed that Mwari was the owner of the plateau. When the English came in the form of a man called Cecil John Rhodes, they called Mwari with a different name, who had similar powers so we accepted that alternative name thereby being diluted into losing our freedom and what Roman law called usufruct whereby an owner was able to give space to what would now be called tenants.

The end of Isaiah 66 says, “In the new Jerusalem the lion (an image of the West), will lay down with the lamb (an image of Zimbabwe) and a little child shall lead them.”

I believe this means the youth will set us free. One thing I cannot understand about our leaders at present, is their devote discipleship of Cecil John Rhodes where skin colour matters as though it can be changed. In any case, black is not black, it is 50 shades of brown. True black is a medical condition called haemosiderosis where iron is deposited in the skin. It also indicates heavy drinking from an iron pot.

Similarly white people can become bronzed in the sunshine but people with albinism have got to be sheltered from the sun because of the damage it causes to their skin. So I do not understand that issue. It is a matter of the past when the country was illegally colonised in 1890 and yet it remains the same today, only in reverse.

 

Dr Timothy J Stamps is Health Advisor to the President and Cabinet of Zimbabwe.