Andrew
There is so much happening in the world right now that it might be difficult to process and make sense of it all.
Germany, which knows the spectre of hyperinflation all too well, hit double-digit inflation in September at 10,9 percent, the highest inflation rate it has ever seen since 1951.
It is the same in the euro area, which is also currently flirting with double-digit inflation as sanctions on Russia — imposed after the special military operation it declared on February 24 this year — take their toll on energy prices and the cost of living.
The upheaval caused the global polycrisis, which has been exacerbated by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, has been particularly marked in the UK, which now has its fourth prime minister (Rishi Sunak) in six years.
Sunak, although a consummate technocrat, seems too green and young, and does not look like one with the political guts, confidence and gravitas to last the distance.
When he landed for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt last week, he did not quite carry himself with the deportment, character, dignity and propriety of someone who leads the second-biggest economy in Europe.
His arms were uncontrollably flailing about him as someone walking into a shebeen, and he most often than not giggled in a manner that projected diffidence than strength. Kikikiki.
You get the sense that Britain is only tolerating him because he might just have the competence to lift the troubled cold island out of the huge mess it presently finds itself in.
More than 300 000 British nurses have already signalled they will be striking for the first time in 106 years before year-end.
It adds to the maelstrom of crises Sunak has faced over his recent controversial Cabinet appointments.
The odds are clearly staked against him.
Maybe he will prove Bishop Lazi wrong.
In Israel, 73-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu recently proved why he is the cat of Israeli politics, when he got a new lease of life as prime minister after cobbling a winning alliance with right-wing ultranationalists.
Netanyahu served as prime minister for 12 years between 2009 and 2021.
This simply means the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to fester.
In China, Xi Jinping became the most consequential political leader in the world’s second-biggest economy in modern times, when the Communist Party of China (CPC) elected him as general secretary at a plenary session on October 23.
It is a record third five-year term for a leader who has been an able steward of Deng Xiaoping’s economic miracle.
Not only has Xi vanquished extreme poverty, but he has put China on the cusp of being a global superpower that is sure to reconfigure the current hegemonic unipolar world into a multi-polar universe that works for all of us, especially those of us in the developed world who have lived through the dark thraldom of a world order that has heretofore condemned us to a life of poverty, disease, conflict and hopelessness.
This again proves the efficacy of the Beijing Consensus, which values meritocracy above everything else and is more practical rather than quixotic.
This is the point that ZANU PF’s Second Secretary Cde Kembo Mohadi made at the just-ended 7th National People’s Congress when he said: “Democracy has its weaknesses as well; (sometimes) we lose the best because of democracy.”
At China’s doorstep is North Korea, which has recently heightened its missile launches after the US provocatively held joint military drills together with South Korea and Japan.
Despite how it has been caricatured in the West as a wretched country whose leadership irredeemably lusts and worships power and authoritarian rule, North Korea is by no means a pushover in global politics.
It boasts the world’s fourth-largest army (estimated at 1,2 million) and now has a fierce arsenal of ballistic missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads such as short-, intermediate- and intercontinental-range missiles, including submarine launched ones.
The world’s warmongers — who have reduced states such as Libya, Iran and Yemen to rubble because of their overweening ambitions — will never dare play a game of brinkmanship with Pyongyang.
Any miscalculation could have disastrous consequences.
Ambitious ignoramuses
Talking about launches, last week, Zimbabwe sent its satellite to the International Space Station, where it is expected to be launched into space, but it seems the magnitude of this epochal feat has been lost to many, especially at a time when the rest of the world is grappling with the present omnicrisis.
It is hardly surprising when you have a 51-year-old supposed Zimbabwean investigative journalist who cannot distinguish between a rocket or spacecraft and a satellite.
Worse, it is tragic when people who purport to have a cultured intellect by having passed through prestigious institutions such as Harvard would think a satellite is a vanity project that is not an exigency to countries in this part of the world.
You would be stretching it too far to think that such an ignoramus would know the true utilitarian value of a satellite.
Pathetic!
Last year, the World Economic Forum projected that data collected from space could unlock US$2 billion per year in benefits for Africa through innumerable benefits from agriculture, mining and planning.
Yet the investigative journalist and cynics of his ilk are supposed to be leading lights in advancing the opposition CCC’s narrative of a better Zimbabwe.
How can such a lot compare to the visionary ED, who, fours ago, on July 10, 2018, launched the country’s space agency — the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency — to advance the country’s research and innovation?
All they know is empty rhetoric about spaghetti roads and bullet trains, but they are blissfully oblivious of the inner workings of the world.
Sending a satellite into space, which only 12 African countries had done before Monday, is a huge deal, and generations after us will unlock huge benefits from such a historic initiative.
And, of course, a lot more is expected from innovation hubs that have been established at the country’s institutions of higher learning.
Just like our brilliant scientists who built ZimSat-1 — Ramson Munyaradzi Nyamukondiwa, Victor Mukungunugwa and Timothy Kuhamba, whose names are now heroically engraved in gold in the annals of the country’s history — our youths now have the opportunity to unleash their creative and innovative potential.
Bishop Lazarus always tells you time and again that the secret to understanding President Mnangagwa and his works lies in appreciating the work of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who is the father of the Chinese miracle.
Shortly after taking over the CPC, he convened the National Science Conference and declared that “science and technology are the primary productive force”.
He also claimed that “intellectuals too are part of the workers’ class”.
His maniacal focus to drive Chinese science to “catch up with and overtake” the level of science in the rest of the world is now the major source of conflict between America and China, as the two countries battle for technological supremacy.
Harnessing science and technology and adapting it for local solutions will help spur the country’s modernisation and industrialisation drive.
Our engineers are gradually stepping out of the shadows and stepping up to the plate, be it through leading dam and road construction, irrigation development and construction projects, among other transformative pursuits.
Last week’s satellite launch is just, but a major highlight of President Mnangagwa’s ambitious plan for Zimbabwe, which he is slowly fleshing out.
He is light years ahead of the opposition, which continues to be befuddled by the incredible strides he is making in key national projects.
Whether it is the Gwayi-Shangani Dam, which was conceived in 1912 as part of the major National Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project, or the Beitbridge-Harare Highway and the mooted greenbelt in Kanyemba and the Lowveld, ED’s eyes are firmly fixed on the price.
He has been able to highlight and accentuate our collective ambition as a people.
You see, we have always been an ambitious people.
A story is told of how long ago subjects of the Rozvi empire decided to fetch the moon and use it as a defining ornament for their king.
They subsequently began constructing a tower to reach out for the moon.
Before long, due to the extraordinary industry of the Rozvi people, the tower was sky high, but not before it spectacularly collapsed on its stilts and nixed the enterprising project.
It reminded the Bishop of the abandoned Tower of Babel in the Bible.
Genesis 11:1-9 is evocatively instructive: “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’
“They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
“Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’
“But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’
“So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
Despite cynic outliers, our language is not confused and we are reaching for the moon and stars.
Zimbabwe is on the march.
Bishop out!
Online Reporter