Monday 1 August 2016

Our genius will be in accepting we failed just as Darwin accept chimp as cousin. By Wilbert Mukori


When Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist and geologist, published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859 – a little over 150 years ago – proposing his theory of evolution with compelling evidence, he could not have insult more of his generation even if he had spit in their mouth! The most offending notion in his whole book was than mankind evolved from an ape like creature and that the champ is our cousin! This flew right in the face of all accepted school of thought of the God, world and mankind’s place in it.

 

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1: 26.

 

This Charles Darwin fellow was discounting the mankind’s position as the one creature made in God’s own image and given dominion over everything else. Worst of all, the fellow was discounting the very existence of God Himself as all living things, according to his theory, evolved from simple, single celled organism over billions of years; making a complete mockery of all the “Let there be light, and there was light!” bull.

 

It was painful enough to be dethroned as one made in God’s own image but to be given a champ as a long lost cousin was an insult many could simple not endure; their egos would simple not allow that! Damn the “compelling evidence”!

 

Thank God (many who believe in evolution still find room for God and religion – Genesis’ account of creation is a religious synopsis pregnant with symbolism and not a scientific theory backed by hard evidence) reason prevail, compelling evidence cannot be discounted on the basis of perceived egos but only by the production of compelling evidence to the contrary.

 

Further research has shown that the human genome, the DNA, the coded genetic recipe defining each and everything alive or has ever lived, is 99% identical to the genome of the chimpanzees and bonobos making them mankind’s closest relative in the tree of life. The gorilla’s DNA is 98% identical to our own.

 

Have a chimp for a close cousin has not stop us excelling in every sphere of intellectual endeavor. We are light years ahead of the chimp if chimp is a day ahead of the gorilla and confirming Genesis’ assertion of man having dominion over all living things.

 

Whilst there is nothing in the human genome to differentiate the intellectual ability of one human from another or the basis of race, gender, religion, etc. Still some nations or tribe within a nation have certainly performed better than others so within nations and tribes some have assumed dominion over others. The dominance of one nation or tribe over the other has not been a permanent fixture like that on mankind over other living things but has it peaks and troughs with the passage of time just as there are hills and valleys with the passage of distance.

 

When Zimbabwe attained her independence in 1980, after nearly a hundred years of white colonial exploitation and oppression many thought the country was set for great things; freedom, justice, peace and economic prosperity. 36 years later, only Mugabe, his cronies and his apologist and their families would deny the economic reality that the country is in a real mess. There is compelling evidence that the root cause of the economic mess is the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption which has result in the criminal waste of the country’s human and material resources.

 

Mugabe and his cronies are like hyenas that grow fat on carrion of the drought victims, except that they are the ones who have drought on this economic ruin on the nation and they have grown filthy rich from the mismanagement and wholesale looting. But with unemployment a nauseating 90% plus, with the country’s health and education services all but collapsed, chronic power and water shortages, 76% of the population now living in abject poverty, etc. even Mugabe and his cronies cannot deny the country is in a mess. This is not where the people expected to be back in 1980!

 

Sadly Zimbabwe has become the basket case of the white supremacists who resisted the ending of white colonial rule in Africa on the grounds that “blacks were inherently incapable of self-government!”

 

There is compelling evidence to prove that Zimbabwe has suffered from the ill effects of corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical regimes. Yes the misrule has been a complete disaster for the nation. How we react to this grim reality of 36 years of failed governance will decide whether we continue to sink or come up for air.

 

We can bury our heads in the sand, which is what Mugabe and his cronies are forcing us to do, and continue we have not put one foot wrong these last 36 years and all our economic problems are because of the sanctions imposed by the West, drought, etc. We will continue to sink into the abyss!

 

Or we can admit we have let ourselves down as a nation; we should have never allowed Mugabe and his cronies 36 long years to drag the nation this deep into the abyss. Whatever else they may claim to be, the bottom line is that they are mere mortals and it is in the power of another mortal to refuse to be led by the nose like a bull.

 

Throughout the 36 years, we have had many opportunities to end Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical rule with the best opportunity being during the GNU when all we had to do is insist on the implementation of the democratic reforms agree in the 2008 GPA. Not even one reform was implemented and we lost that chance.

 

The country’s worsening economic crisis is forcing Mugabe and his cronies to acknowledge the reality of the economic meltdown, Mugabe and his cronies are engaged in a dog-eat-dog fight over the fast dwindling wealth. Like it or not they know the present system is unsustainable although they a loathed to accept the change must include far reaching political reform. It is for us to make sure there are far reaching political reforms; we implement all the 2008 democratic reforms.

 

As a black person accepting that our leaders, Mugabe and his cronies, are corrupt and incompetent has been comparable to mankind at Charles Darwin’s time accepting mankind is not special, he not made by God in His own image. There is compelling evidence that Mugabe and his cronies are corrupt and incompetent, we need to accept this reality, implement the democratic reforms design to end Mugabe’s no-regime-change mantra and set the nation free of his corrupt and tyrannical rule that has brought nothing but misery and ruin!

 
Mankind’s genius over our nearest cousin the chimp was in accepting Charles Darwin’s compelling evidence that we evolved from a simple single celled organism just like every other living organism and move on and be the ape that has reached for the stars and beyond. Similarly Zimbabweans’ genius would be to accept black leaders can be corrupt and incompetent, learn from Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical misrule, and build a healthy and functional democracy and put the nation on the map as a free and prosperous nation.

10 comments:

  1. When it comes to the intellectual race, Zanu PF has done this nation a great disservice. The regime has reminded us all of how it expanded the education system by leaps and bounce when it came into power and boasted of how the country has the highest literacy rate in Africa. But when one learns that of the 300 000 Zimbabwean students who sat their "O" levels last year 70% of them failed one or more of the three main subjects, English, Science and Maths.
    Many of these students do not know what a verb is, I know because I asked them, after 11 years of formal education. No doubt they are all considered 100% literate!
    Three or four years of quality education should be enough to teach one to read and write, Zanu PF needs 11 years!
    Here is a whole generation that has been condemned to be a consumer of modern technology, most of the urban student has a mobile phone, watches TV, etc. but will never ever understand it much less play any meaningful role in its development.
    The late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, moaned of how America had successfully send men to the moon and safely brought them back to earth and yet Africa was still struggle to take a man across the street. He was right! In Zimbabwe the streets we inherited from Ian Smith are now more dangerous than ever given the size of potholes; everything is in varying stages of rot and
    decay due to poor maintenance and neglect.
    If it was not for the donors our education, health and other critical services would have collapse years ago.
    "Credit where credit is due," Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa argued on BBC HardTalk a few weeks ago. "We have the highest literacy rates in Africa!"
    Yes Honourable Minister (the idiot has been cabinet minister for donkey years but has precious little to show for it, just another case of quantity but no quality), many Zimbabweans can read and write their own names but very little else beyond that after 11 years of formal education. But of course that is immaterial given all you ever care about is quantity. What a waste of humanity!
    Zanu PF has not help this nation advance but has rather dragged us backwards. What a waste of human talent and human life! Unless we end this Zanu PF dictatorship this nation will fall further and further behind even those African countries whose literacy rates are not so grand but those who can read and write can also do a lot more and thus help the whole nation advance.

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  2. There will be Zanu PF politburo meeting tomorrow to discuss the party's factional war.

    The country is tittering on the edge of the abyss and those running the country are wasting time squabbling over who should be president; this is what comes of a regime that is not accountable to the people. By being able to blatantly rig the elections Mugabe knows he can completely ignore the people and their crying for an end to their economic hardships because come elections he can just rig the vote to grant himself another landslide victory.

    It is times like this that one really begins to comprehend the seriousness of Tsvangirai and his MDC friends' betrayal. If only they had implemented the democratic reforms when they had the chance to do so then we would not be in this fix!

    All hands to the wheel, we must now redouble our efforts to push for the implementation of all the democratic reforms BEFORE the next elections. This country cannot afford yet another rigged election!

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  3. Zanu PF is being totally dishonest here, it is bringing back the Z$ with all its runaway inflation problems by the back door in the dead of night. If it was honest it would bring back the Z$ by the front door after detailed discussions to assure the people there will be financial discipline, transparency, etc.


    As it is the bond notes will used to rob the ordinary people of their money as they will have their US$ taken away in return for worthless bond notes. It will not be long before the regime has more bond notes than the US$ 200 million.


    The people of Zimbabwe were robbed by Zanu PF before and they must do everything in the power to resist being robbed once again. I totally agree with all those rejecting the bond notes!

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  4. I fought in the liberation war and know exactly what you mean; I cannot tell you how many times I heard the argument that the spirit medium said this and we all followed no question asked regardless how stupid the instruction might be. If anything does go wrong the medium will always have someone else to blame but if you disregard the instruction you will be blamed for everything that goes wrong regardless how unrelated the two events may be.


    All our lives we have been ruled by fear, fear to displease the dead spirits is one of the most insidious worst cloaked as it is in myth and mystery!

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  5. Nonsense, there is absolutely no reason, other than that they sold-out, why MDC failed to implement the reforms during the GNU and settle this issue of free, fair and credible elections once and once for all. We have other important matters to attend to instead of wasting time on the same issue generation after generation!

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  6. “This is not to say war veterans are blameless. In my recent article I challenged them to publicly and sincerely apologise for the shameful roles they played in bringing misery to our people over the years. I hope they heeded the call,” you said.

    So if you are now supporting these rogue war veterans; what is it they have said or done to convince you that they have heeded you call?

    We should not forget that these rogue war veterans have been Mugabe’s storm troopers who have ruthlessly denied the people their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free elections and even the right to life for selfish reasons of getting a share of the political power and looted wealth. They have fallen out with Mugabe not because they have realized that what they were doing was wrong but because the tyrant was not honouring his part of the bargain of making them rich.

    In their fight with Mugabe they have said it again and again that they, the war veterans, are the “stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe” and the rest of us ordinary people are “stakeholders”. We, at best, have a vote on who is to rule Zimbabwe; the war veterans on the other hand have the veto!

    Just because these rogue war veterans are now fighting Mugabe does not mean that they are now democrats. We do not want to embrace them as friends complete with their veto today and then fight them tomorrow for exercising the veto!

    In 1980 we thought, foolishly as we now know, that Mugabe was on our side when the evidence said otherwise. In 2008 we thought Tsvangirai would implement democratic reforms although there was evidence that MDC was corrupt and incompetent. We should not be so naïve and gullible to accept people like Mujuru and Mahiya as democrats just because they have fallen out with Mugabe.

    Just because one hyena is fighting another that is no proof that one is now a vegetarian and it will be folly for the goat to think so!

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  7. There is nothing wrong with keeping the revolt burning but unless we have clear view where we are and where we want to go we could well end up drifting deeper and deeper into the abyss! We have a false start in 1980, and another one in 2008 ; surely we must be smart enough to make sure this does not happen yet again this time!

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  8. Zimbabwe has spent nearly $100 million, five years of parliamentary time and God knows what else beside to produce the new 2013 constitution only the it to be a weak and feeble one because MDC allowed Mugabe “to dictate” the new constitution as MP Paul Mangwana, the Zanu PF representative on the parliamentary committee tasked to write the new document. The new constitution failed to deliver is single most important set objective – free, fair and credible elections.

    Instead of admitting that the new constitution was too weak and feeble to ever deliver free and fair elections MDC has found comfort in asking for the existing laws to be aligned to the new constitution. Now even the usually wishy-washy and indecisive ZESN is admitting the whole realign exercise is a waste of time.

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  9. Our failure to discuss anything, especially matters of great national importance like what we need to do to ensure free, fair and credible elections, at nothing much above a superficial level has been our greatest weakness. It is not hard to see why our political discourse has been limited to slogans repeated over and over again in the past and today has been replaced by the twitter and whatsapp social media. One cannot express much in 140 characters and that is why social media has appeal to so many people just as slogans had done.

    In the real world we live in there are some people who are always on the lookout for those weaker than themselves who they can exploit. We have corrupt and murderous tyrant like Mugabe who have no problem looted billions of dollars from the nation and waste it on vote rigging, endless overseas trips, etc. whilst millions of their own people suffer in damn anguish.

    Even the not so bright people like Morgan Tsvangirai, who are too corrupt and incompetent to unseat Mugabe and have never even tried to do so but are smart enough to take advantage of the electorate whom they keep promising they will unseat Mugabe. Tsvangirai promised the people the 2013 constitution would deliver free and fair elections but even when that failed to happen it failed to register in the people's sloth mentality.

    A nation that will not think on its feet is a doomed nation; we are not thinking nation, we are doomed nation and deserve to be!

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  10. “AS Zimbabweans, we need … to popularise the habit of thinking. Thoughtless politics is what has brought us here,” opposition MDC leader and former industry minister Welshman Ncube said Friday, exasperated by the rush to embrace the war veterans revolt against President Robert Mugabe.
    I have known Professor Ncube for a long time and this is without doubt one of the rare occasions when he has said something that makes sense! What a pity he never has one such rare moment during the GNU because he would have implemented the reforms if he had done so!

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