NEW LEADER FOR ZIMBABWE

There isn’t anything the matter with EU and USA except that Mugabe is viewing it through a vision impaired by self-preservation. Poise has been disturbed and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity and men have wandered far from safe paths. In the New Zimbabwe, we will feel the reflex, rather than the hurting wound, but we will still think straight, and we mean to act straight, and mean to hold firmly to all that was ours when madness involved us, and seek the higher attainments which are the only compensations that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind.

Zimbabwe’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It is one thing to battle successfully against domination by military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life’s acquirements. The world called for peace, and has its precarious variety. Zimbabwean demands peace, formal as well as actual, and means to have it, regardless of political exigencies and campaign issues. If it must be a campaign issue, we shall have peace and discuss it afterward, because the actuality is imperative, and the theory is only illusive. Then we may set our own house in order. We challenged the proposal that an armed autocrat should dominate the nation; it ill becomes us to assume that a rhetorical autocrat shall direct humanity. This republic has its ample tasks. If we put an end to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of leadership today. If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the nation than all armed conflict ever recorded. Zimbabwe needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.

The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government, and no eminent page in history was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. More, no government is worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by intimidation on the other. Nothing is more vital to Zimbabwe today than clear and intelligent understanding. Men must understand one another, and government and men must understand each other. For emergence from the wreckage of Gukurahundi, the DRC intervention, Murambatsvina, land expropriation, three million Zimbabweans in exile, one billion percent inflation, collapse in education, health, road and electricity infrastructure, extensive poverty, election violence and death, biased judiciary, media paranoia, for the clarification of fevered minds, we must all give and take, we must both sympathize and inspire, but must learn grief and aspirations, we must seek the common grounds of mutuality. There can be no disguising everlasting truths. Speak it plainly, no people ever recovered from the distressing waste of  Gukurahundi, the DRC intervention, Murambatsvina, land expropriation, three million Zimbabweans in exile, one billion percent inflation, collapse in education, health, road and electricity infrastructure, extensive poverty, election violence and death, biased judiciary, media paranoia, except through work and denial. There is no other way. We shall make no recovery in seeking how little men can do, our restoration lies in doing the most which is reasonably possible for individuals to do. Under production and hateful profiteering are both morally criminal, and must be combated.

Zimbabwe cannot be content with minimums of production today, the crying need is maximums. If we may have maximums of production we shall have minimums of cost, and profiteering will be speeded to its deserved punishment. Money values are not destroyed, they are temporarily distorted. Humanity needs renewed consecrations to what we call fellow citizenship. Out of the supreme tragedy must come a new order and a higher order, and I gladly acclaim it. But madness has not abolished work, has not established the processes of seizure or the rule of physical might. Nor has it provided a governmental panacea for human ills, or the magic touch that makes failure a success. Indeed, it has revealed no new reward for idleness, no substitute for the sweat of a man’s face in the contest for subsistence and acquirement. There is no new appraisal for the supremacy of law. That is a thing surpassing and eternal. Contempt for international law wrought the supreme tragedy, contempt for our national and state laws will rend the glory of the republic, and failure to abide the proven laws of today’s civilization will lead to temporary chaos.

Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the Zimbabwean people. Nothing is so imperative today as efficient production and efficient transportation, to adjust the balances in our own transactions and to hold our place in the activities of the world. The relation of real values is little altered by the varying coins of exchange, and that Zimbabwe is blind to actualities who think we can add to cost of production without impairing our hold in world markets. Our part is more than to hold, we must add to what we have. It is utter folly to talk about reducing the cost of living without restored and increased efficiency or production on the one hand and more prudent consumption on the other. No law will work the miracle. Only the Zimbabwean people themselves can solve the situation. There must be the conscience of capital in omitting profiteering, there must be the conscience of labor in efficiently producing, and there must be a public conscience in restricting outlay and promoting thrift.

Sober capital must make appeal to intoxicated wealth, and thoughtful labor must appeal to the radical who has no thought of the morrow, to effect the needed understanding. Exacted profits, because the golden stream is flooding, and pyramided wages to meet a mounting cost that must be halted, ought speed us to disaster just as sure as the morrow comes, and we to think soberly and avoid it. We ought to dwell in the heights of good fortune for a generation to come, and I pray that we will, but we need a benediction of wholesome common sense to give us that assurance. I pray for sober thinking in behalf of the future of Zimbabwe. No worth-while republic ever went the tragic way to destruction, which did not begin the downward course through luxury of life and extravagance of living. More, the simple living and thrifty people will be the first to recover from a war’s waste and all its burdens, and our people ought to be the first recovered. Herein is greater opportunity than lies in alliance, compact or super government. It is Zimbabwe’s chance to lead in example and prove to the world the reign of reason in representative popular government where people think who assume to rule. No overall fad will quicken our thoughtfulness. We might try repairs on the old clothes and simplicity for the new. I know the tendency to wish the thing denied, I know the human hunger for a new thrill, but denial enhances the ultimate satisfaction, and stabilizes our indulgence. A blasé people are the unhappiest in the entire world.

The Zimbabwean people will not heed today, because world competition is not yet restored, but the morrow will soon come when the world will seek our markets and our trade balances, and we must think of Zimbabwe first or surrender our eminence. People will trade and seek wealth in their exchanges, and every conflict in the adjustment of peace was founded on the hope of promoting trade conditions. Knowing that those two thoughts are inspiring all humanity, as they have since civilization began, I can only marvel at the Zimbabwean who consents to surrender either. There may be conscience, humanity and justice in both, and without them the glory of the republic is done. I want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the Zimbabwean inheritance and confident of the supreme Zimbabwean fulfillment.

Stanley Mauro Jensen