APPEAL TO AFRICAN ELITES

I am working for rural development internationally particularly for African countries. I have visited Africa four times and moved in several countries and I am trying to understand African people with a keen interest.

I am very much distressed to see dangerous disparity in all the African countries i.e. only a handful of people having captured most of the wealth of the country and millions of masses remaining hand to mouth. I have also observed that most of the races of Africa have inner spirit and good capabilities to come up in line with so called civilised and developed countries.

So I am very much optimistic that Africa is competent enough to come out as the strongest continent of the world in a very short period of 10 to 20 years and can provide alternative to the western life style which has no future as it is based on exploitation of the entire world. I am humbly describing myself as real friend and real well wisher of African people because I have burning desire to remove their merciless exploitation being done through various multinational and big companies. I want to humbly show real path of happiness for common masses. I am carrying in my heart certain BASIC CONVICTIONS which force me to suggest that if the path which I am recommending is followed by African people, it will bring economic revolution in Africa and also in the world in one or two decades through which Africa will come out as the strongest continent.

But I have painfully observed that most of the elite class of every African country is under illusion that model of development and progress imposed on them by developed countries is correct and path of development and progress shown by developed countries is real path. So all the Governments of Africa follow the same pattern of development as Europe and U.S.A. followed. So every African country is trying to establish big industries, is trying to develop highways, cities, power stations, ports, airports and infrastructure required by giant industries. I VENTURE TO ASSERT THAT THIS IS NOT THE PATH OF HAPPINESS BUT THIS IS THE PATH OF EXPLOITATION AND PERMANENT SLAVERY OF AFRICAN PEOPLE

If you want homogenious development and progress of entire society of millions of masses,you have to evolve your own economic strategy based on local self reliance atleast for primary needs of people i.e. for food, cloth and shelter. Very evidently this type of local self reliance can be achieved through cottage scale family size industries based on small and simple technology. When I came to know about big maize mills purchasing maize from hundreds of villages, I was really shocked. Tremendious amount of exploitation can be eliminated simply by establishing tiny tiny maize mills everywhere where ever necessary. Maize milling is the simplest technology. A very ordinary workshop can manufacture maize mills. But it is a painful wonder that throughout Africa, big big maize mills are working resulting in to heavy exploitation of common masses. Nature of technology is such that complicated machinery makes simple thing also complicated.

Primary needs such as maize flour, wheat flour, rice, cooking oil, sugar, jaggery, tea coffee, soap, cloth, bricks, tiles and building materials etc. are all simple things and all these things must be manufactured at cottage scale level with very simple and cheap technology. THIS IS THE PATH OF HAPPINESS. BIG COMPLICATED MACHINERY HAS NO PLACE IN MANUFACTURING PRIMARY NEEDS OF PEOPLE. WHENEVER AND WHERE EVER YOU VIOLATE THIS PRINCIPLE, YOU GIVE RISE TO EXPLOITION, ANY COUNTRY OR SOCIETY WHICH IS BEING EXPLOITED FOR PRIMARY NEEDS OF PEOPLE, CAN NEVER COME UP AND IS DESTINED TO RUIN.

Many people raise doubts that how all the primary needs can be fulfilled through cottage industries. How cloth and sugar can be produced at cottage scale. I know that number of such questions can be raised. I must admit that I have no ready made solution for every such question. But I do have strong faith and conviction that every such question can be transformed in to a pleasant solution if dedicated efforts are made to develop small and simple technology for every kind of primary needs. You must know that previously world best quality cloth was produced in millions of houses of India since centuries with very simple tools and equipments not costing even 100 dollars. It can be still produced in millions of houses if controls imposed on cottage industries for favouring giant centralised economy are abolished.

A very fine quality of jaggery (hygenically better than sugar) is still produced at cottage scale practically at every sugarcane farm in spite of strict controls of our government to abolish this farm level industry for favouring giant sugar factories. Bricks and lime is still a cottage industry througout India. There are atleast 500 tiny flour mills in my city alone (population 9,00,000). Oil milling was also cottage industry throughout India since centuries. Our Government made foolish blunder to abolish it.

So my most sincere advice to African elite class is that "You should immediately return from the dangerous path which leads to exploitation, ruin and perish. You should evolve your own path based on decentralised, small and simple machinery which will have no exploitative capacity. Only such machinery will be blessing to the mankind. Through such simple technology only, you will be able to create homogeniously happy society and such happy society will be right answer, right solution and right alternative to the western type wasteful and exploitative civilisation. THOSE WHO WORK FOR THIS CAUSE ARE REAL FRIENDS OF HUMANITY.

One most common doubt is raised against such tiny industries is that whether such tiny units are economically viable and can compete to big units ? It is really strange that such question is asked from every part of the world. So it seems that entire world is under illusion that big heavy industries are more viable. This is absolutely wrong. In fact tiny units are always more viable than big centralised industries. One can imagine that tiny units enjoy four distinct advantages over big centralised units. i.e. (1) Transport is eliminated or minimized (2) Packaging is eliminated or people use their own tins, bins, jars etc. (3) Middlemen are eliminated. (4) Marketing is eliminated or minimized and hence all evils of marketing such as profiteering, hoarding, speculation, aldulteration, deception, shortage etc. are automatically eliminated. Tiny units for basic needs will work for local consumption with local raw materials. So all the four advantages will go to tiny units. So they are bound to be far strongly more viable than big centralised units. I have proved this contention beyond doubt by establishing 900 tiny cooking oil mills which are running most successfully, most profitably and most satisfactorily in India and 20 African countries. What is true for tiny oil mills can be proved true for other industries of basic needs also.

So I sincerely appeal to all AFRICAN ELITES to come out from false illusions of development, to throw away present theory of development, to ponder over the alarming situation of present age and seriously adopt this pious work of rural development through tiny scale industries with strong faith that entire Africa can be got rid of entire exploitation and entire continent can be made happy without any big industry. I am absolutely confident that one who will determine to work in this direction, will definately meet with great success and he will earn the credit for making great revolutionary changes in Africa through small deeds

RAJKOT
1st, May 1999

C/O http://ata.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkcategoryid=1&linkid=12

A simple recipe for xenophobia

SHOCKING: Police move in to help an unidentified man who was set alight in Reiger Park, south of Johannesburg, Sunday May 18, 2008. The man was rushed to hospital, his present condition is unknown. (AP Photo/Shayne Robinson)

By Justice Malala
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki and his ANC successor Jacob Zuma were refugees in London, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria, Swaziland and Mozambique, among other places, between 1962 and 1990.

I mention this for those of my countrymen and women who have short memories. We should be ashamed that it is us who are today raping, looting and killing foreigners apparently because they “steal” our houses and “our women”.
What caused the terrible scenes unfolding in our country today: children beaten and displaced, women raped and men left with pieces of flesh hanging from their faces, homeless and hungry and desperate?

What led to a situation where young men were unashamed to stand in front of television cameras and say they will kill foreigners?

We should not be surprised. For the ANC, led by Zuma and Mbeki, the chickens are coming home to roost.

A cocktail of factors, mixed by the ANC over the past 10 years, is responsible for the barbarism.
These people are behaving like barbarians because the ANC has failed — despite numerous warnings — to act on burning issues that are well known for having sparked similar eruptions across the globe.

This cocktail is made up of stubborn denialism on Zimbabwe, an increasingly incompetent and corrupt police service, poor service delivery and corruption in government departments.
The crime-does-pay culture fostered by the ANC — criminals such as the Travelgate fraudsters walk away scot-free — is a central ingredient of the cocktail.

But the bulk of the cocktail comprises the failed state that is Zimbabwe. The country’s economy has collapsed. Its political leaders, security services and agents are looting the treasury. Zimbabweans are fleeing.

When a state fails, crime goes through the roof. Corruption, characterised by bribery at every turn, becomes the norm. Crucially, crime is exported across the borders of the failed state to neighbouring states.

The Mbeki government’s refusal to even acknowledge the crisis in Zimbabwe has resulted in as many as 3-million Zimbabweans walking the streets of South Africa.

If Mbeki and his deputy president, Zuma, had acted decisively on Zimbabwe nine years ago, when they were told repeatedly by fellow leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Durban to do so, these Zimbabweans would not be here today.

Mbeki’s resolute refusal to address the crisis in Zimbabwe — and his friendship with President Robert Mugabe — has brought them here. His block-headedness is directly responsible for the eruption of xenophobia.

Add to the cocktail the fact that the SA Police Service has become so incompetent and overstretched there is no way that any of the perpetrators of the past week’s atrocities will be brought to book.

Ordinary citizens predicted last week that these riots would spread to the Joburg CBD. When violence erupted downtown on Saturday night, the police were unprepared.

The police have no intelligence- gathering capacity and can hardly explain what is happening today, let alone contain it.

Their failure is rooted in the fact that many of them are taking bribes from foreign refugees anxious to avoid being deported.

Their incompetence is also responsible for the culture — entrenched during the Mbeki-Zuma regime — that crime goes unpunished. After all, these marauding hordes know that Mbeki protected his crony, Jackie Selebi, for years.

There is no respect for the law. These hordes can rape and loot without fear of arrest, let alone prosecution.

The endemic corruption among government officials is an integral part of the cocktail. There is so much corruption in the construction and allocation of government housing that resentment, misplaced or not, is inevitable.

There are no quick fixes to this mess. The removal of Mbeki, as suggested by Mathews Phosa, is not a solution. The problem is that the ANC’s policies have failed.

In the short term it would be an idea for the incompetent minister of safety and security, Charles Nqakula, to get his charges to come down harder on perpetrators. Better intelligence-gathering, including the early identification of potential trouble-makers, would help.

Government leaders such as Mbeki should visit the communities afflicted by this xenophobia, instead of issuing condemnations from Mozambique.

In the long term, some cool heads, efficiency and moral fibre would help. But asking that of the ANC today is asking a little bit too much. These are the same people who are disbanding the Scorpions. Asking them to act in the interests of the country, and not their own narrow interests, is useless. - Sunday Times (SA)

You are what you EAT!

MOTIVATION FOR SUCCESS By Milton Kamwendo.

It is easy to just get anything and pop it into our mouths without thinking about the significance of what we are doing. For some people eating is a form of recreation or hobby. Just because food happens to be there does not mean that it should be eaten. Just because we have been served a certain portion does not always mean the food has to be finished. While it is true that there are people who are starving, there are others whose problem is compulsive eating.

There are people who complain about their weight but never take time to think about the foods they eat, how and when they eat. Unfortunately there are so many items that are promoted as food when they are simply junk — they will amuse our palate but have little nutritional value. There is a difference between feeding and nutrition. We can literally feed on anything but it may not have the right nutritional value we require to fuel and repair our bodies. We become what we eat — one wishes there was a more complicated formula. It is true that we are not all the same genetically and we process food differently but this does not change this basic rule.

What is true for the body is also true for the spirit and for the mind. Greatness is a product of what and how we feed. A starving body is a weak and sick body. A starving mind negative, small thinking and abused too. A starving spirit characterises a life that is not vibrant, inspired and purposeful.

Nutrition for the body

There are so many diseases today that are associated with our eating habits. These include a variety of cancers, stomach illnesses and heart diseases. Most of the fashion fast foods and additive substances are not good for our health. They drip with fat, are not balanced and contain many artificial preservatives, and colorants. While these foods may fill our tummies they do not do a lot of good for our bodies. Their manufacturers would care no less. Before we pop anything into our mouths it is important for us to pause and think what it is and what it will ultimately do to our bodies. We are personally responsible for caring for our bodies — they are the temples that we carry around. Poor eating habits can be likened to dumping junk into the most sacred of temples.

What then should we be eating, drinking and inhaling? Water is the most important part of any diet. Drinking water is very beneficial. Some people would prefer to just take a fizzy drink instead of water. Fizzy drinks are laden with sugar, preservatives and other chemicals.

Water, plain and simple, is the best drink we can ever take. Fresh fruit and vegetables have great nutritional value and are a wonderful source of vitamins. Roots, nuts, bulbs and tubers like peanuts, potatoes are also useful. Grains and cereals are useful as energy foods and roughage. Salads are great sans their dressing which usually offsets their benefits.

Much has been talked about red meat. If one decides to eat it smaller quantities would help. The general rule is that food that is as close as possible to its natural state is best.

There is enough literature on good nutrition and I will now turn to mental and spiritual nutrition.

Mental nutrition

Parents would do anything possible to ensure that their homes have food for their children. However, it is unfortunate that a home that does not have any good books is a starved mental environment. What we feed our minds determines our attitudes, knowledge, beliefs and execution. We think with what we know. The more we feed our minds the more resources we make available for our minds to use for creation and problem solving. When we feed our minds with junk we become mentally obese — full of mere words but devoid of wisdom.

There are times when we work under pressure and have very little time in our hands for reading and personal study. This should never be an excuse for failing to feed mentally. Mobile learning is a very wonderful opportunity that modern technology has made even more convenient and accessible. I have found that an iPod is a wonderful little tool in this regard. It is easy for one to get virtually free a myriad podcasts in one’s area of interest. Besides one could also record audio books and other programmes on this little gadget. What I find amazing is just how much one can store and carry around to listen in the gym, at a doctor’s appointment or in the traffic. For those who are conservative the traditional tape or CD Walkman can be useful. Listening to audio books and presentations turns our cars from being mere vehicles into learning laboratories and universities.

Nothing however beats the charisma of a good book. Anyone who does not read has no real advantage over anyone who cannot read. Books are to the soul what fuel is to a motor vehicle. Apart from books attending seminars, workshops and conferences is a brilliant way to feed the mind with new ideas, thoughts and trends. Certain community groups like Toastmasters, Rotary, and BNI have small segments in their meetings where various speakers are invited make presentations. These can be very useful mental "snacks".

The Internet is a powerful engine for mental nutrition.

The Internet provides an ocean of knowledge on virtually any known subject and an opportunity to interact with like-minded people from every known place in the world. Frequent surfing of subjects of interest is a useful exercise. The Internet carries good, junk and poisonous mental food. It is useful to think about what we are surfing.

Spiritual Nutrition

Spiritual nutrition is an important if not the most important form of nutrition. Being part of an inspiring group of believers in the context of a Church is an important vehicle to continued spiritual nutrition and growth. It is also important to develop personal spiritual practices like prayer, study and reading of the Bible and consistent fellowship. Some people have found that they grow faster spiritually under the guidance of some mentor, teacher or pastor. Spiritually we become like that which we are feeding on.

Life is not just about eating but without eating there can be no life. We need our spirits to be awake and agile in our pursuit of greatness. We need our minds to be alert and prepared. We need our bodies to be healthy and fuelled for the greatness journey.

What we choose to feed the spirit, mind or body determines what we eventually become.

Please note Milton Kamwendo is the Managing Consultant of Innov8 – The Motivation Company. He is a motivational speaker and author of three motivational books: It’s Time to Unleash Your Greatness, Dance and Pursue Your Dreams and Let the Lion in You Roar. For more information visit: www.innov8motivation.com Email: info@innov8.co.zw. Or write to: P.O. Box CY 1993, Harare. Tel: 739867. Blog: http://innov8motivation.blogspot.com

Young Zimbabwean Debators A shining star in the world

THE Zimbabwean debate team, represented by Prince Edward, comprising Leroy Nyarhi, Tashinga Gomera and Paul Kaseke, left Harare on April 27 2008 to compete at the World Schools debate.

They returned as bronze medalists.The PE team were national runners-up in the 2007 Nugget Debate League and they organised themselves during the April holidays to go to Romania to compete in the 2008 edition of FIAT "Let there be" debate competitions. Upon arrival in Romania, the team competed in the preliminary round on the topic, "This house should stand against Nationalism".

There were four more rounds to follow but in this particular level Zimbabwe, who were opposing the motion, were impressive and successfully defended their motion. Leroy and Paul earned the best speakers’ accolades in this round.

The second round had the motion "This house stands against video games" and Zimbabwe stood for the motion and, again, they were victors with Paul being voted the best speaker for the session.The team was then called up to defend the motion, "This house regrets the influence of the USA after World War 2" in the third round. Although they lost, Tashinga still came out as the session’s best speaker.

The fourth round was the last disappointment for the Zim team when they had to support the motion, "This house would justify corporal punishment". But Leroy and Paul were again best speakers in the lost debate.The fifth and final round had the motion "This house believes only democracies should vote in the UN General Assembly" and Zim were against the motion.Leroy and Tashinga were the best speakers in this enticing encounter.

The Zim team’s speakers were voted the most powerful and convincing speakers of the competition. This was because in all its debates, the best speaker award came to the Zim team regardless of the team’s result.After calculating the overall points, Leroy was voted third best speaker internationally while his team mates, Paul and Tashinga, came fourth and sixth respectively.

They each received US$1 000 and PE was invited to Botswana by popular hip-hop artiste Scar who was taken aback by their performance to train debators in his country.

Mr Tawona Zvongouya accompanied the Zim team to Romania and was recognised as both an international adjudicator and debating coach.He was invited to train local teachers in Romania to coach and adjudicate.Overally the trip was a resounding success and this was confirmed by the standing ovation that the team received aboard the return flight to Zimbabwe from passengers.

In Romania the team saw the second largest building in the world, which is the Parliament Building in Bucharest, and also had a chance to visit Brasov and Sinaia.There was an amazing exchange of culture and ideas and all the 80 participating teams had a lot to learn from each other. It was a great tour.

The writer, Tashinga Gomera, is a Lower Six student at Prince Edward High School.

Double life for Zimbabweans in the Diaspora

By Norah Spie

ALLOW me to interrupt your normal reading and introduce myself, and my new self-titled column on New Zimbabwe.com.

My name, as you have gathered from the above, is Norah Spie, a journalist from Harare now based in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Oh, Spie is my maiden name and yes I am Zimbabwean!
So how did I end up having a strange name (at least that's what I have been told)? Well, its a long story but the short of it, is that we used our grandfather's first name, who was called Spie Murindagomo. If you are interested in the long version then its all in my book, Parallel Lines.
Some of you will remember me from my days at The Herald in Zimbabwe (just to be clear because I later worked for the Herald and Post in Luton). I had a daily task of reporting on the government diary and once a week I had my very own a lifestyle page.

Since moving abroad, I have been freelancing for various newspapers including the The Voice (London) and The Independent. I have also moved into broadcasting which I find very interesting, but writing will remain my passion.

In this brand new column for New Zimbabwe.com, I will be writing about life matters. The stories that affect our every day lives, but with a light-hearted approach.
The world we live in now is so busy that it is easy to forget about the little things that really matter. The news from home is distressing, but I want you to read this column and hopefully laugh..........................................................Do you ever stop and think who you are? Where you came from and where you are going?

We often hear that phrase, 'don't forget where you came from', but what does it mean? How does one balance between knowing your past and not being stuck in the past?
Lately, I have been having difficulties in accepting that I might spend the rest of my life in a foreign country. Everywhere you look there is something reminding you that you don't belong. Is it all in the head or are these signs for real?

As an individual, that choice might be the one to make or break you.
Then there is the issue of having a 'double life'. I'm talking about how Zimbabweans have to take care of themselves here and families back home. That is no easy task but for many years now, this has been the order of the day.

This 'double life' existence has given some people in the diaspora a reputation for not 'taking care' of themselves here compared to other Africans because we send all our money home.
Zimbabwean women are often accused of not spending enough on hair, make-up and clothes while the men are laughed at by their African counterparts for just wearing the same old baggy jeans and hideous American T-shirts.

Have we got our priorities wrong or is it a matter of "not forgetting where we came from"?
What I find curious is that on the other hand, they say Zimbabweans are too westernised, referring to the fact that we do not have a national dress or lavish African dishes and how most of us thought plantain was some funny-looking banana, but these very people have given up on Africa because they don't run two families like most of us do, they don't invest in their own land like us. So who is westernised there?

What our fellow African brothers and sisters don't realise is, unlike other Africans in the diaspora, Zimbabweans dream of the day they will go back home. Nobody knows if this dream will come true but it is better to be prepared for it so that if it does come true, you have fixed assets in your own land.

I often wonder if that dream is stopping people from making sound developments where they live today. How long are we going to live in a temporary state of mind? Isn't it time to let go of the past and start living the present?

Some people still work very hard like they did in the first six months of entering a foreign country. There is nothing wrong with working hard but we need to be smart about it. People are neglecting their well-being in the name of money. Yes we live in a capitalised world but it is up to us to balance the act. Love yourself, be proud, stop and think about what is really important. It is quite easy to get stuck in a rote.

Everyday life is a battle with an invisible enemy. Sometimes we create the enemy among ourselves. If you speak to anyone in the diaspora who has visited home recently, they will tell you it was no holiday. After working extremely hard, one often looks forward to going home for a break but often they come back even more stressed out because everyone home expects the one living abroad to pay for everything.

That is one end, the other end is when you see your friends who never left doing much better than you and you start to wonder if moving was a smart idea in the first place. I think it is time to put it right.

Zimbabweans in the UK are partly to blame. Remember about five or six years ago when UK banks were dishing out loans like food about to go bad? People back home were seeing UK based Zimbabweans purchasing properties within a few months of being here and it looked easy. But things that are too good to be true usually are. Its like a salesman that offers you a free pen after you have signed your life away!

It is not easy to have been born and brought up in one culture and then spend adult life in a totally different society, a society that promotes individualism. What we have to do is keep the good aspects of our culture and adopt other good aspects of the new cultures we are now encountering because of our lives.

So where-ever life has taken you, be it Malaysia, Estonia, Qatar, Cuba, Finland or the more common places like Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Mozambique, the United Kingdom or Europe, remember to keep your head up and say a prayer for our beloved Zimbabwe.

Norah Spie's new weekly column appears here every Wednesday. You can e-mail her at n_spie@hotmail.com. Her new book, Parallel Lines, is available at many good bookshops and you can also order it online from AMAZON