BY EDITOR
2nd January 2014
However, this should not mean that we repeat whatever we did wrong or refuse to learn from our mistakes! As English musician Dan Pearce would say: “Our greatest mistakes, if we look at them, and digest them, and interact with them, and learn from them… they can be the greatest moments of our lives.”
On no score have we, as individual players, as members of local communities or organisations or as a nation, been without pluses here and minuses there.
We may not necessarily have seen major changes on the social, cultural, political, economic and other fronts, but surely we can easily cite cases where we excelled and where we struggled or indeed performed or behaved well below expectations.
We could have done an immense lot in emancipating ourselves economically and otherwise, what with the vast natural resources and other wealth we are blessed with – but, alas, how recklessly we handle it!
There is every evidence that we have lost – or are fast losing –the war on poaching, grand corruption, gross abuses of power and embezzlement of funds and various other forms of crime by people we have entrusted with positions in the public service.
Earlier this week, wardens in a world-acclaimed game reserve admitted that they were hopelessly equipped and were therefore waging a war of eggs against stones when it came to combating poachers.
They were not the first to admit as much. Much more highly ranked authorities, including a whole Natural Resources and Tourism minister, have done so on several previous occasions. He had to, because things are so bad in that our national parks, game reserves and wildlife management areas are now so much at the mercy of heavily armed poachers that arguing that the situation was under control and there was no cause for alarm would sound treasonable.
Despite well-intentioned interventions such as Kilimo Kwanza, there is precious little on the ground to show that we are really determined to make our agriculture tick enough to adequately support the national economy in general and the local industrial sector in particular – the latter itself in a shambles for years now.
While there has previously been abundant proof of bad blood between and among our people primarily precipitated or fanned by religious differences, things have cooled substantially, and one only hopes the tempo of the return to normalcy will be maintained.
But there can be no peace, harmony or meaningful development where there is no justice – and hence our prayer that all of us to their utmost ensure justice takes deeper root in our country. It would be the height of illogical thinking to believe that injustice can hide; it always operates in the open, and it causes anger, anguish and misery impossible to tolerate.
As we eagerly wait to see how events unfold this year, we should all stand warned! May each and all of us strive to make 2004 a truly happy and meaningful year!
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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