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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
Atrocious increases in daily infections and deaths from Covid-19 of late paint a dizzying picture of the gargantuan challenge that Zimbabweans and other people elsewhere in the global village face.

But to be sure, are the victims and potential victims of the deadly coronavirus not possessed by a demonic spirit of fatalism that makes them bury their heads in the sand as it were by thumbing their noses at safety guide lines by the World Health Organisation, and replicated by our own Government as well as other governments elsewhere, as a desperate mobilisation ploy by the devil for people to rebel against their Creator, by accusing God of not protecting them from the coronavirus so that satan may have more companions on the way to hell at the end of this world?

Asked by this writer earlier this week if behind the anti-Covid-19 guidelines by some members of the public was a belief that the measures by the Government were political and should therefore be rejected, Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo, the spokesperson for the ruling party Zanu-PF, said there was nothing at all political about the measures introduced to curb the spread of the killer disease and that people must comply with the regulations to save their own lives from the pandemic that knows no political affiliation whatsoever.

Ambassador Khaya Moyo, who recently returned home from overseas after being stranded there for several months unable to find a flight to catch back home, did however cite some of the challenges being faced in raising awareness about the dangers posed by covid-19 in Zimbabwe.

For instance, he stated that restrictions on gatherings during the pandemic made it difficult to effectively educate more people at the same time about the dangers posed by Covid-19.

But be that as it may, any reasonable members of the public concerned about their own safety and that of their families must in fact take advantage of electronic and print media which daily, even hourly, inundate them with information about the necessary precautions to take for their protection especially in urban areas.

Ambassador Khaya Moyo also said that some people in towns claimed that they cared for large family members whose movements were not easy to control.

But is the public meant to deduce from the naïve explanation that the person or persons in point above wish for Covid-19 to reduce the size of their families to smaller, manageable ones?
Curiosa or curiosa.

He said also that people in some areas claimed that they were short of water in order for them to wash their hands regularly during the current pandemic as required by the Government guidelines to prevent the spread of the covid-19.

But surely, surely, that those people are not dead from thirst or from hunger for lack of water with which to cook their food, or do not stink repulsively, or so one believes can only suggest that there is, to the contrary, some water with which to wash their hands to stay safe from the killer virus.

Ambassador Khaya Moyo did say, however, that Zanu-PF and the Ministry of Health and Child Care would continue to push and push for all protective guidelines against Covid-19 to be followed to save lives.

Fondly referred to by some, including this communicologist simply as SK – and once heard him being described by a pretty young lady with seductive eyes in a hair salon in the capital as “that man with a captivating smile” and her interlocutor responding with; “oh the one who is too close with himself and maybe to the woman who catches him…,” said that in rural areas, chiefs and their subordinate traditional leaders would also leave no holds barred in raising awareness about measures to prevent the coronavirus spreading, namely masking up, regular hand washing and sanitising, social distancing, et cetera.

He said the blitzkrieg measures were particularly important in light of reports of a more menacing variant of the coronavirus rushing across the Limpopo river northwards through Zimbabwe, like a wild fire and resulting in any traveller from our country and from the south to Western countries, among them Britain, being declared persona non grata apparently to prevent the transmission of the more rampaging virus entering those countries.

But surely South Africa or any other African country for that matter have never been known to breed coronaviruses.
Which suggests that a holier than thou attitude by the North is being foisted on the South when the reality is that any more deadly coronavirus in South Africa or elsewhere south of the African continent must have been transported and planted on our continent by visitors from the West eager as the West was once known to be when the Aids virus was first created in American laboratories with the express intention of wiping off the black race from the face of this world but the Aids experiment went wild refusing to discriminate between black and white people.

In the circumstances, it would appear, at least to this journalist, that only God can put the lid once and for all on attempts by the North to rub off its own filth on the South as long as this decaying world remains intact.

For the record, the new strain of Covid-19 reported in South Africa was first detected in the West, where it was obviously originated.