Some moments of global greed incite current wrath by nature, writes Okello Oculi
Grandma heard horrified talk about rain eating hundreds of people in a land called ‘Europe’ and, from a deep breath, said: ‘’Nature is angry with their ways’’. Children around her laughed at her old thinking.
Television pictures reported about terrible heat waves gripping Canada and California/ Oregon regions of north America. Huge flames of fires turned horizons red. Hundreds of families run away from homes doomed to be consumed by these fires; losing material possessions and objects of ancestry. Many also lost hopes of completing debts owed to companies as mortgages for homes.
Television pictures of rapidly flowing rain water which drowned cars; thrown some against trees and torn walls of houses; of wrecked bridges and livestock and persons carried to unknown endings. Wreckages also include the reputation of northern Europeans as conquerors of nature by highly organised use of scientific knowledge. The Norwegian sociologist and mathematician, Johan Galtung once made that claim with lavish arrogance.
Germany, for example, had nurtured a reputation for building stout infrastructure and machines; even in conducting competitive football matches. The genius of the Dutch for reclaiming land from the Atlantic Ocean and creating waves of tulip flowers, and cities, were under challenge.
Descendants of Holland and Germany who carried to South Africa and Namibia their habits of clenched teeth in fighting nature, have continued to sustain Silent Genocide by malnutrition and hunger as they stubbornly hold vast fertile land which they robbed in yester-centuries.
Little wonder that rivers of youths running back and forth (like red soldier ants)- hauling booty and food grabbed from shops, malls and street kiosks. While some fell over each other in their surges, security officials were shown shooting unarmed looters that were not throwing stones or grenades on military tanks rolling comically on empty streets. Victims of official protection against realising ‘dividends of anti-apartheid wars’ had resorted to a hunger-based revolt and grabbed food and low-quality consumer goods.
After World War 2, fear of Socialism spreading to Western Europe and Asia outside China, had compelled the United States to pump heavy economic investments into Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong in Asia and West Germany and its conquered neighbours. Their economic revival and prosperity around territories ruled by Communist parties became beacons to arouse appetites against socialist countries ravaged by war.
The triumphs of liberation wars across Southern Africa have not earned surges of investments to inoculate exploited and oppressed masses of Africans against socialism. President Robert Mugabe’s resolve to recover land from European immigrants was met with ruthless economic embargo meant to impoverish his people and turn them against the struggle for economic prosperity for themselves.
From Mali to Mozambique, violent Muslim militias financed and ideologically inspired by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates are killing inhabitants, seizing livestock, burning down houses in areas rich in minerals. In Mozambique, there are reports of children beheaded in a region rich in natural gas already under commercial exploitation.
. In South Africa, a government led by Cyril Ramaphosa, a beneficiary of the ‘’Black Economic Empowerment’’ scheme, has found itself resorting to guns and tanks once used by racist rulers to smash the current ‘hunger revolt’. The death of over 120 looters between 11th and 16th July, 2021, reminds South Africans of Sharpeville killings in their past.
In Eastern Africa, yesterday’s Tigray rulers of Ethiopia now are fighting a war for secession from Ethiopia following their loss of power inside a former ruling coalition. Following the fall of the military rule of Mengistu Haile Mariame, the Tigre –led coalition broke up centralised government into semi-autonomous language-based districts.
It shattered Amhara hegemony. As a minority ethnic group, they resorted to ruthless violence and mass imprisonment of challengers from the larger and bitter Amhara nationality. They were also accused of channelling economic benefits to their region. Both a legacy of violent and selfish rule produced deep fears of revenge by other controllers of government at the federal centre.
The internal bleeding in Ethiopia’s body politic erodes achievements by Meles Zenawe’s government. It detracts from glorious examples in Senegal and Tanzania where Leopold Sedar Senghor and Julius Kambarage Nyerere as Christians from Minority nationalities were elected and governed for 20 unbroken years over Muslim ethnic Majorities.
In the Americas, Cuba’s scientists have invented a Vaccine against COVID-19 that is 92 per cent effective. Her provision of education and health care to the highest quality to all citizens, provokes the ‘’Black Lives Matter’’ movement globally. The United States of America conducts economic terrorism against this brilliant example of human development.
It is little wonder that these moments of global greed for indulging in doing evil deeds incites current wrath by nature through tossing out hurricanes, earthquakes and belches by climate change.
