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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
News to the effect that outreach teams in Matabeleland South province have started vaccinating youths aged between 16 and 17 against Covid-19 should not only be applauded but must serve as a challenge to 9 other provinces in Zimbabwe to also protect young people and those they get into contact with against the killer virus.

And thanks to Zimbabwe’s all weather friend China for the Sinovac Biotech vaccine which has come handy in protecting young people whose unrestricted mobility also takes them on visits to friends or family relatives in some countries across our borders where the coronavirus is causing untold rampage.

The protection of youths hitherto excluded from coronavirus vaccinations should be viewed as necessary against the background of a fourth wave of Covid-19 rampaging across some European countries – and to which young people are said to be more vulnerable – and no doubt headed to Africa and Zimbabwe as members of the same global village as Europe, so that strict monitoring of that fourth wave must remain uppermost among all in the global village.

What therefore appears imperative is for health authorities across the country to work with political and traditional leaders for effective Sinovac coverage in rural areas where villagers are not as speedily and effectively covered information-wise by radio or newspapers.

Then there is the question of women and girls being sexually violated by bestial men brandishing their reproductive organs in their hands – a gender issue that calls for a law making those found guilty wish that they belonged to a neuter gender.

That kind of punishment cannot fail to drive the fear of wanton sexual violence among offenders and in the process protect the dignity of the female gender.

But our law enforcers should also bear hard on traditional practices that must be regarded as primitive and under which a girl may be given away to marry a man as compensation for damages caused by members of her family.

In some cases a girl is given away to bear children that her sister or aunt has failed to give a man who paid lobola so that there is continuity in relationships between families.

The bottom line here is that there is no known justification, legally or otherwise, for parents or any other relatives to impose their own will on who their next of kin should be.

If truth be told, only God created each one of us with the will to do what is right for ourselves in life and that will remain embedded in every one of us with God’s Word in the Bible as decoder of that will.

The Bible in John 1vs1 says: “in the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Simply stated, therefore, the do’s and don’ts directed at us as read in the Bible are God’s voice talking to us as His children only to be disobeyed at our own peril.

Which simply means that we have to discover our will in the Bible in order to have a breakthrough or an overflow financially or health wise as all these were already guaranteed by the Word, God himself.

A further suggestion therefore is that we must associate with people or children of God whose inputs into our lives will make us discover the will of God for us and when that happens no mortals will make us indulge in violence, extra-marital sex or in acts that do not accord with God’s word as His holy manifestation.

Therefore, the Church of Jesus Christ is the gateway to our will on earth as well as to profound joy in Heaven.