Online Reporter
Communion with Bishop Lazarus
AS Zimbabweans, we are scions of a great people and descendants of a great civilisation.
Our forebears held sway over the African hinterland and controlled critical trade routes whose influence spread to the ends of the Earth.
Our ancestors were the foremost of African rulers known to the Arabs.
The thriving markets of Kilwa — an Islamic city-state on an island off the coast of southern Tanzania — were partly oiled by the booming trade in gold and ivory, among other valuables, sourced from this resource-rich hinterland.
The prolific Islamic traveller and prolific author, Al-Masudi, bore testimony to the impact of this highland plateau, where archaeologists later discovered coins from Kilwa, porcelain from China and other items from Persia (now Iran) — a dominant nation of western Asia for over 12 centuries — and Arabia.
Today, the imposing mortarless stone monument of Great Zimbabwe, built in the 11th century, stands as a timeless reminder of our ingenuity, craft, power and influence as a people.
Indeed, we are a people of consequence.
It is, however, our riches that attracted the greedy lot from the West that took over our lands and altered our way of life.
This later sparked what turned out to be a storied war of resistance, which culminated in the overthrow of the colonialists.
Not only did we vanquish colonialism, but we, unlike our peers, went a step further by venturing where the angels feared to tread through taking back our land.
Our people will forever be united to their sacred land(s).
Shaping the world
As they have always done throughout the centuries, Zimbabweans continue to distinguish themselves and make a mark in and on the world, shaping it through their superior intellect and craft.
When humanity faced its biggest existential threat in more than a century — Covid-19 — two Zimbabweans — Tatenda Shopera and Sikhulile Moyo — stepped up to the plate and etched their names in the annals of world history.
Forget that fantastical Hollywood fiction of superheroes such as Superman, Iron Man, Captain America and Bat-Man, these two individuals, like Jesus who was born in a manger, were largely unassuming characters who came from very humble beginnings but changed the world as we know it.
For instance, Shopera, who was born in Masvingo, grew up in a family of eight that lived in the Nenyere Flats in Mbare, which recently trended because of the notorious bed bugs (tsikidzi) phenomenon. Kikikiki.
His family struggled to get him through school, but he persevered nonetheless, earning himself a place to study medicine at the University of Zimbabwe.
Among his daily struggles, he had to walk from Mbare to the city centre and hitch-hike to the main campus.
Among some of his haunting experiences, in 2008, he had to rush his cholera-stricken mother to Beatrice Road Infectious Diseases Hospital in a scotchcart, arriving just in time to save her life.
He later made nonsense of his background.
Infected by a burning passion to learn how medicines are made, he opted out of medical school and pursued a path that saw him read for a BSc and Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering at Jacobs University Bremen (US).
He subsequently earned a PhD in Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering from Washington University in St Louis.
To cut a long story short, the hitherto unknown Shopera, as a senior scientist at US-based Pfizer Inc, which is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, made history by being part of a team that developed the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine — the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine — in 2020.
A year later, his fellow countryman, Sikhulile Moyo, a virologist based at Botswana Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory, made an incredible breakthrough when he discovered the Covid-19 variant Omicron on November 19, 2021.
Like Shopera, Moyo, who was born in Matobo district, grew up in a big family.
He was the ninth child in a family of 17.
Similarly, his family struggled to pay for his education, but he eventually made it.
For his efforts, he was recognised as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Probably the biggest accolade for Moyo — a holder of a PhD in Medical Virology from South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, and whose father is the brother of late national hero Jason Ziyaphapha (JZ) Moyo — was being awarded the Order of the Great Zimbabwe in Gold by President ED.
But Moyo was not the only Zimbabwean to get credit for the groundbreaking work involved in the discovery of the Omicron variant.
He also had in his team a young Zimbabwean called Wonderful Choga, a bioinformatician who earned the Presidential Order of Meritorious Service in Botswana in 2023.
Maybe Taurai Prosper Vanhuvaone, the quack doctor (alias Prosper Mpofu) from Bulawayo, who was recently outed after prescribing a “fruit salad” to a patient with a heart condition, can learn a thing or two from these esteemed gentlemen. Kikikiki.
Charting new frontiers
There is a legion of many other Zimbabweans who have, and are, making a mark in the region and beyond, not least Ben Magara (former CEO of Lonmin) and Ralph Mupita (CEO of MTN).
And today, as science and technology develop at breakneck and supersonic speeds, we have Zimbabweans who are leading that charge.
The lanky James Manyika, a senior vice president at Google-Alphabet and member of the senior leadership team, easily comes to mind.
His CV is as long as the Zambezi River.
He is a senior partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company and is chairperson and director emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute.
At McKinsey, he advised CEOs of many of the world’s leading technology companies on technology and strategy.
As we grapple and try to make sense of artificial intelligence (AI) in our lives, James has already written a book in AI and robotics (Decentralised Data Fusion).
He serves on the boards of research institutes at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Toronto.
Suffice to say, this University of Zimbabwe alumni, just like many of his peers that Bishop Lazi mentioned above, has a brain and a half.
Folks, all these eminent men, and many more like them, were born and bred here.
Psalms 66:8-12 says: “Praise our God, all peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard; he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”
Rebuilding Great Zimbabwe
Today this intellect, talent and craft is being used to build a majestic new Zimbabwe.
Bishop Lazarus was quite amused when the Smith-was-better online brigade tried to pooh-pooh the ingenious work of local engineers who built the Trablablas Interchange.
It is, however, a pity that no one took the time to do a documentary on some of the innovative designs applied by our local engineers, such as the reinforced and retaining walls — common in the mining industry but used for the first time in road construction projects.
Also, bridge number 4 is considered to have one of the best walls on the project as they mimic the 3D design.
All this was done by our local engineers.
By the time they are done with all the interchanges in and around the capital, Harare, all the cynics will be left in awe.
This is what ED means when he says a country is built by its own people (Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi balo).
After years of building other countries, our very own people are now building the Zimbabwe that they want and deserve.
And it is beautiful.
Bishop out!
Tinaye Agere