Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu

A dispassionate critic of Zimbabwe’s First Republic as well as part of the Second Republic is wont to be akin to ripping the lid off a huge can to expose worms and maggots of different sizes and tastes comingling and doing their own thing with complete disregard of the laws governing their existence as they vie to satiate their greed.

Contextually, therefore, were the Zimbabwean environment  a person it might wail and wail, the crying a signature tune of its distress — while dragging the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) by the  ear to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for lamentably failing to rein in culprits violating our right to “exist peacefully” as is the case with environments elsewhere in the global village.

But, of course, EMA finds itself in the same predicament as its mother body, the Government, now having sleepless nights pondering over how to deal with some state employees as well as others in its parastatals, not to mention others still in the private sector for whom corruption has become the ease of survival particularly these days with the economy on one knee, thanks to illegal Western economic sanctions imposed on the Zanu-PF Government and therefore on  Zimbabweans as a whole for introducing land reform. 

Add to that extortionist prices of goods by businesses either as a political attempt to effect regime change, or simply because of runaway greed while the bellies of workers and the general public shrink and shrink.

We wrote in these columns a few weeks ago suggesting to the powers-that-be that corrupt leaders and workers in both the private and public sectors should be rusticated into the shade and only freed after undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts in hopes that such no-nonsense remedial punishment would deter potential offenders driven by a propensity for corruption.

Similarly, no-holds-barred sanctions must of necessity be visited on flagrant violators of the environment, such as companies that discharge poisonous industrial waste into the bellies of urban dwellers, in particular, via water supply dams with no populace while apparently telling themselves that “their government” or “their local authority” will buy the chemicals to purify the water.

Now, with money supply, particularly forex so scarce to import chemicals to purify the water  poisoned by industrial waste, it is certainly only by the grace of God that urban dweller do not die, like flies, after consuming such dangerous water.

In rural areas many villagers defecate into their own mouths, as it were. With few or no pit latrines not to mention Blair-toilets; the poor folk out there in the sticks resort to the bush to relieve themselves and soon after flies carrying the faeces probably under orders from their bottle-green commanders follow the reliever back home, landing on uncovered food and spreading disease germs in the process.

Or when it rains the villagers carry their washed away liquefied waste matter from unprotected wells or from stagnant water in rivers with consequential health hazards in some cases.

Which suggests that the subject of good hygiene and environmental protection should feature in schools both in the rural and urban centres in order, for instance, for the children to help guide their parents on these very important matters of life and death.

Also in the countryside strict measures must be considered to control wanton deforestration and veld fires – the latter usually for hunting purposes – while the former alters rainfall patterns for worse.

Alluvial gold panners also degrade the environment by digging up river beds causing siltation while at the same time poisoning water with chemicals and thereby endangering livestock and human lives consuming the contaminated water.

Back to the bright lights of urban centres.  Factory chimneys spewing fumes into the sky provide fascinating sites to some people and this no doubt gave rise to Bulawayo earning the name ko Ntuntu Ziyathunqa  or literally translated as the City of Rising Smoke from the heydays of the City of Kings and Queens as Zimbabwe’s industrial hub.

Today it is every Zimbabwean’s fervent desire to have the many dormant manufacturing industries back in operation and many more new ones set to make our country truly industrialised as we work towards the realisation of an upper middle class economy by the year 2030.

This brings us back to the all-important subject of environmental protection.

So, old and new factory chimneys should be modified so that they do not spew dangerous carbon gases into the atmosphere to pollute it and in that way worsen global warming.

Zimabwe should not emulate the United States of America which has pulled out of the Paris Agreement on global warming and environmental protection with the results that their industries consider themselves no longer obligated to modify the factory chimneys to prevent dangerous carbon emissions. 

For the people of this country as well as of those elsewhere in the global village, a clean environment should be regarded seriously as a sine qua non of the saying “cleanliness is next to godliness.”

   Contextually, therefore, were the Zimbabwean environment  a person it might wail and wail, the crying a signature tune of its distress — while dragging EMA by the  ear to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for lamentably failing to rein in culprits violating our right to “exist peacefully”