It was the great Greek philosopher Socrates 2 500 years ago who said "STRONG MINDS DISCUSS IDEAS AVERAGE MINDS DISCUSS EVENTS, WEAK MINDS DISCUSS PEOPLE."
Socrates lived during the golden age of Greece when democracy, science, art and civilization was at its glorious best and Socrates, Plato and other great minds were right at the thick of it. Socrates and his fellow thinkers were never contend with what they saw and heard, they had inquisitive minds always asking questions. Why? When? etc.?
“An unexamined life is not worth living!” said Socrates.
To discuss ideas that will help solve problems and change the world one necessarily needs a certain amount of intelligence to accrue knowledge, to sift and refine it through reflection and real-life experience. It is this strong mind, with the refined knowledge, tested and proven facts and religious regard for the truth, that will solve problems and change the world.
It is easier to talk about people because here everything goes, there are no rules and knowledge counts for nothing. Truth, facts, opinion, lies and damned lies are all legal tender to be traded in equal measure, accepted today and rejected tomorrow. No one listens to what they are saying let alone what the others are saying. No one remembers anything, it is impossible to remember something one heard with their ears only; there is no intellect to record anything verbatim let alone process the information and store it as knowledge.
Discussing ideas required train, discipline and effort and for the intellectual couch potato discussing people is the default setting because it requires the least effort. The strong-minded people get their buzz, Eureka moment, from see their ideas work. The feeble-minded people are not so demanding, they will cheer and applaud anything! Anything at all!
"In Africa, there is a problem of failing to understand the generational transition. Our old generation is failing to understand the times. They looked after us when we were children but now it is our turn to take charge,” Nelson Chamisa, the President of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the MDC Alliance.
"(Former President Robert) Mugabe, Mnangagwa you have done your part in serving this country during the liberation struggle but now pass the button to today's generation. Then we will show you how a country is run," to deafening applause.
Chamisa’s default setting is to discuss people and his feeble-minded audience were thrilled to bits to hear him wittering about nothing. QED!
With Mugabe and Mnangagwa it was one’s war-time history, political loyalty, gender, tribe, region, etc. that matters the most and intellectual merit matters not at all. It is therefore not surprising that the country has gone to the dogs during their 39 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule.
and thus they too discussed people, not ideas, whilst the country sunk deeper and deeper into the hell-on-earth it finds itself in today.
Zimbabwe is in a real economic mess with unemployment a dizzying 90%, most basic services likes health care have all but collapse and ¾ of the population now live on US$30 or less per month.
Before independence the country was rightly proud to be called the breadbasket of Southern Africa. We produced enough food to feed the nation with surplus to feed our neighbours and still be world leader in producing quality tobacco, cut flowers and other produce. All that is history, today the nation is relying on imported food aid.
We live in the day and age when human ingenuity has turned deserts into blooming orchards. And we are starving in the land that, for all practical purposes, is the Garden of Eden! A damning testimonial to the sheer incompetence and feeble-mindedness of Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs.
Whilst Mugabe and Mnangagwa were obsessed about dividing people according to who fought in the war of independence and who did not. Chamisa is obsessed about dividing them according to age.
"Young people of Africa this is your time. This is not just a Zimbabwean phenomenon. This is the case in South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda and in Kenya. Young people must stand to rescue our continent," said Chamisa.
Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, the President of Kenya is 51 years old and Raila Odinga president of the Orange Democratic Movement, Chamisa’s natural allay is 74 years old. So, if it is youth alone that matters Kenya certainly does not need rescuing!
Emmerson Mnangagwa and many other Zanu PF thugs were a lot younger that Nelson Chamisa’s present age of 41 years in 1980 when Zimbabwe gained her independence but youth did not stop them ruthlessly imposing the de facto one-party state the nation has suffered under these last 39 years.
MDC A’s own checked political track records shows that the party’s leaders are breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent, regardless of their youth. Ten years ago, Chamisa and his fellow MDC leaders failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years of the GNU. Not one!
South Africa has had the misfortune of having corrupt and incompetent leaders but there is no doubt that the country has always held free, fair and credible elections. To suggest that the country needs rescuing is to fail to appreciate the virtue of a healthy and functioning democracy.
Yes Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya certainly need rescuing from the curse of rigged elections. These countries need to replace the feeble-minded opposition leaders with the strong-minded one who will implement the democratic reforms and finally deliver free, fair and credible elections!
In a development that could collapse the already troubled Zimbabwe health care system, nurses at public health institutions have announced that they are, with immediate effect, reducing their working week to two days.
ReplyDeleteThis has been attributed to poor salaries and cost of transport.
This was bound to happen! If the nurses’ salary is barely enough to cover their transport cost for two days then they will come to work for two days only. Where would they get the money to pay for the other days?
The tragedy is that the sick need health care 24/7 and so the consequences of the 24/2 reduced service is that there will be more suffering and deaths; suffering and deaths that could have been easily avoided.