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In the late 19th century a man of remarkable vision, Cecil John Rhodes, set out to conquer the African continent. His aim was not merely to subjugate it’s primitive black inhabitants but to set out an impressive network of commerce. He spoke of a rail network that would stretch from the Cape, through the heart of Central Africa and reach the courts of Cairo. It was a crazed manner of ambition. Had the man lived years in step with his hopes I have no scarcity of faith that all he sought to achieve would have been accomplished.
Consider this dear reader. In the late 19th century, a British man unfamiliar with the African terrain imagined laying down a rail network across thousands of miles. Take to mind the numerous obstacles. He did not have the luxury of advanced technology and accurate mapping as we do today. There was no certainty about how agreeable the various tribes they would encounter would be. There was the real chance of an entire workforce being devastated by some obscure tropical disease. Despite all this the man dared to dream. He had a vision. He had imagination.
Today Africans suffer the disgrace of being the poorest of the poor. We suffer the debasement of beggars. Western televisions stations run aid appeals for Africa in an endless loop. Hungry black babies strapped to the backs of the equally hungry mothers. If only it were getting better. It is not. Africa is worse off today than it was 30 years ago. We are becoming more the poorer.
One would imagine that an ambitious leadership would arise with unique ideas to overcome the uncommon challenges that we face.
The problem we face is not failure nor inherent inability. It is limited imagination. All things are possible to them that believe. What the mind can conceive it can achieve. Mankind has gone to the moon, set metal in flight in the form of airplanes, conducted hand transplants, face transplants and set out advanced technologies through complex computing procedures; this being so surely Africans can do as much as feed themselves. But we have failed. So miserable is our existence that we cannot feed ourselves. It is a miserable reality to face, a stripping of dignity.
We come back to the matter of leaders of limited imagination. Zimbabwe has failed in a most basic task: bringing water from the Zambezi to Matebeleland. This is not a tasking feat demanding advanced engineering but we have still failed. We have failed because none of our leaders ever had it in mind. Nobody ever imagined the reality of it, or cared to imagine.
When Mugabe came to office in 1980 he had a vision, albeit a limited one. He set out courageous reforms in education to redress the imbalance set in place by the past colonial regime; because of what he saw in his mind, his imagination, today Zimbabwe has the most impressive literacy rates in Africa. It is not that those nations that are not as accomplished in education are incompetent or that Zimbabweans are of superior intelligence. Far from it. All things are possible to them that believe. It is only that they have never had a leadership that conceived advancing education in the same manner as Mugabe did.
The problem then is not insurmountable odds but a leadership that is unable to dream. The strength of the Americans is not in uncommon intelligence but in the ability to imagine. To imagine a bomb with powers of destruction beyond compare, an imagination that later incarnated itself as the nuclear bomb. To imagine traveling to the moon. The power is in being able to conceive an idea. That is half the task accomplished. When the mind determines to accomplish a task the obstacles one encounters along the way can easily be overcome. A way will be found for this, obstacles of any form can be overcome.
Food is the most basic of mankind’s needs. Are we so incompetent as a people that we cannot have a surplus of food? Is it not possible to line the entire Harare-Mutare highway with endless fruit trees? Is it not possible that we can have a nation in which bananas are thrown away because of abundance? These are not grand goals. How is it we cannot have vast fisheries across the entire nation? How is it that we cannot grow potatoes in such abundance that they go to waste because of excess. These are not insurmountable goals near landing on the moon. Is our government unable to set out efficient subsidies and manage ambitious agricultural projects to feed the nation? If we can run a scarily efficient intelligence service like the CIO on a shoe string budget then surely we can grow potatoes.
The challenge dear reader is that this has never entered the imagination of our leaders. They are concerned with their bellies and the anatomy below the belt. With those satisfied so are they.
Does Morgan Tsvangirai have sufficient mental clarity of thought to bring about such considerable transformation in our national direction? I’ll let the reader decide.
In 2008 the the people of the United States were readying to elect an eloquent man of unique accomplishments, Barack Obama. Obama had grand ideals. He spoke of a world free of nuclear weapons, universal health-care for Americans and a world of greater peace and cooperation. A man begins with a vision. Given power he walks toward that which he saw in his mind. At that same time South African was readying to elect a man of less colourful stripes to high office, Jacob Zuma. Here was a man who had been involved in corruption scandals and whose right hand man had only recently been convicted of gross corruption. Here was a man who was so dull as to not see the absurdity of telling a court that he had taken a shower after have unprotected intercourse with an HIV positive woman, this in the hope of preventing infection. This is the man that South Africans determined to anoint as king. One Julius Malema vowed that he was ready to “kill for Zuma.”
What is Zuma’s imagination, what is his vision. What he sees in his mind is what will happen to South Africa.
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