Read my lips: The newspaper is going nowhere

I just read an article that says that the writing is on the wall for newspapers in Zimbabwe. The writer quotes statistics released by the Zimbabwe All Media Products Survey (Zamps). The reason given is that they are slow in waking up to the reality that is the internet. Online publications are becoming the in thing and newspapers are headed for the dustbin.

The survey results showed that print news readership in Zimbabwe has started to decline. 

‘Newspapers will not die anytime soon. No. Total death (sic) may not even happen, but the media business has been heavily disrupted and the effects are starting to be felt here,’ writes L.S.M Kabweza.

Newspapers will not die for the simple reason that in Zimbabwe, it has become such an essential part of our lives. We know that the main use of newspaper is to provide news, but it can do much more. For starters, everyone will attest to newspaper’s wrapping qualities. One of Britain’s long held traditions is that of wrapping fish and chips in the day’s tabloid issue.

We are not at liberty to discuss the hygienic demerits of doing so but where we come from particularly were plastic has no reach, and is expensive, newspaper can wrap anything from tomatoes to traditional medicine. It’s not criminal as far as we know to wrap vuka vuka (aphrodisiac) in a copy of the Herald. 

The Herald newspaper (Google Image)

How does the man of the house escape Sunday detention after a hard night out with the boys? He pretends to go out to buy a newspaper! He has not concocted a story to escape the clutches of a visibly angry wife, though of course returning 12 hours later with torn copy smeared with fat from the barbecue at the club will not win him any points on the domestic front.

Evidently a few pages of the least popular section of the newspaper would be missing. Paper has to be used to start up the fire that will get the braai or shisa nyama going. You don’t need the skills of a steam train driver to do that.

When Sipho, the boy from next door, for some odd reason decides to stage a mini version of the Africa Cup of Nations in your yard with the rest of the neighbourhood, what does he use for raw material for his version of the Jabulani, newspaper and a plastic bag of course. Most of the soccer greats past and present graduated from the street-paper-ball academy.

Shisa Nyama Botswana style (Own collection)

Never mind that the ‘Jabulani’ turns into the ‘Balekani’ (run away) when one of the more skilful of the boys executes a spectacular volley à la Messi – in the direction of your window. We are not going to embarrass you by describing how you chase the retinue down the street failing to catch a single of them. But rather how you find a newspaper coming handy in providing permanent cover over the gaping hole against the elements.

It is a fact that for a long time tissue paper was beyond the reach of many and still does, especially when you are found having to choose between mathumbu (cheap tripe) and tissue. Though many of us will not openly admit it, newspaper becomes a logical alternative. It serves a dual function. There is the aspect of catching up with news stories that you missed while answering the call of nature.

Then there is what we will call the ‘utility’ aspect even though the traction of newspaper has always been in doubt when it comes to wiping the nether end. This does not become an issue when no better alternative can be found in the vicinity. Leaves and maize cobs have been found to be highly unsuitable even in times of desperation.

A word of caution though having worked for the municipality, you should not be surprised if the sewer pipes in the vicinity decide to rebel and regurgitate their contents into your yard. These are some of the dire consequences for your being a bit on the thrift side of things. City health officials will not be pleased and don’t make things worse by complaining that it’s their job to clean up your mess.

Clever quips like when you say to them, ‘At least you are one group of workers who need not worry about retrenchment,’ is inadvisable. For some unknown reason cleaning sewerage is known to induce severe bouts of violent behavior in those employed to undertake this unfortunate task, even though they are paid overtime doing it.

Google Images

There is a darker side to the use of newspaper besides the intended purpose. It would seem that carrying a newspaper gives a false impression of dignity. It explains why pickpockets and other career crooks carry newspapers as a form of diversion. 

They are hiding their criminal intentions behind your favorite broadsheet or business paper. Carrying any of the tabloids would not do since they are just as sleazy. I am yet to see one of these hoodlums carrying a comic magazine, novel or the Holy Bible for that matter.

There are there equally diabolical uses like those con artists who have fooled members of the public (to use the police’s well-worn cliché) into believing that they can make their money multiply. Instead, they are left clutching bundles of newspaper every time. This trick has been used to dupe people since the days of the federation and yet they never seem to learn.

As much as we extoll the virtues of newspapers when starting a fire, arsonists also find a newspaper’s incendiary qualities very ideal. It covers their tracks especially when the house they are torching has stacks and stacks of newspaper that never gets to be used even when the option to sell to recycling companies can raise those desperately needed dollars.

There are many more uses of a newspaper that can one can identify like using them as an umbrella when caught out in a rain storm or on a particularly hot day or stuff hats, leather bags and shoes to keep their shape, make paper planes and provide excuses for husbands not to be disturbed. For this reason newspapers have become an institution.

Good habit or bad? (The Guardian)

The newspaper is unlikely to disappear from the street corner or from the loo for that matter, whether for utility or entertainment. I can’t for the death of me imagine using an Apple’s iPad to wipe my behind no matter what the name of the contraption or that of software misleadingly implies. 

Words that could bamboozle you:

vuka vuka - a traditional aphrodisiac that is sold in powder form and can be added to soup, traditional beer or taken neat if you are brave enough, an hour before the action.

Jabulani - the name given to the specially designed soccer ball used in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Its aerodynamic qualities eluded many a goalkeeper.

 Messi - a short Argentinian soccer player, now the richest in the world, who turns out for Barcelona who virtually can't be marked and scores at will. Short of shooting him he is unstoppable.

amathumbu (ah-mah-too-mboo) - tripe, a delicacy among our countrymen yet sometimes associated with poverty because its supposed to be a cheap relish. I said 'supposed' to be.

braai/shisa nyama - the Afrikaans/Zulu name for a barbecue. South Africa has declared it a heritage tourist attraction and the last day of the working week has been set aside as Braai Friday. Only the South Africans can do this...

iPad - Apple computer company's iconic tablet computer that has left competition in its class in the dust. A stroke of genius from the late CEO Steve Jobs.

Why your doctor could be dangerous

Dr Vernon Coleman is a medical doctor with an attitude. He wrote the book ‘How to stop your doctor killing you.’ That should give you an idea of what kind of person he is. He holds very strong views on the medical profession, vaccines, government and politicians. He is of the opinion that anything that the government organizes is required to be inefficient, uncaring and incompetently run.

Coleman qualified as a doctor in 1970 and worked as a GP for 10 years in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. He quit the profession more than 20 years ago because he wanted to try and change the world. ‘You can’t do that working inside the system,’ he says.

The controversial author believes that the medical profession in its present state has become a danger to mankind. 

“Which of these people do you think poses the greatest threat to your life: a burglar, a mugger, a drunken driver, a drug-crazed lunatic or a temporarily insane relative running amok with a sharp knife?” he asks.

It's none of them. The person most likely to kill you, Coleman says, is your doctor.

He makes a shocking claim, at least to the profession itself, that a staggering amount of evidence to show that modern western doctors, equipped with fancy drugs, exotic forms of surgery and impressive sounding radiotherapy techniques, are ranked alongside cancer, heart disease and stroke as major killers.

He could have coined the proverb which says: A young doctor means a new graveyard had it not been attributed to the Germans. An opponent of a national health system, Coleman believes that this has stolen the intimacy and privacy of the doctor-client relationship and not only made it public, but patently dangerous to the patient. 

Coleman, a popular columnist and author of more than 100 books goes against the medical grain by informing his readers that at least two thirds of all tests and investigations ordered by doctors and cost patients a fortune are useless. Now there goes the analytical laboratory business out of the window.

For example, he says, one survey showed that the routine examination of blood and urine contributes to only one per cent of diagnoses made. This reminds me of the case of a business partner who after a car accident went for a battery of tests that came out with negative result implying that his injuries were not that serious. That was until exactly three months later when another practitioner accidentally discovered a life threatening pulmonary embolism that was a direct result of the accident.

So why does the doctor order these tests even if they were useless? Dr Coleman man says that it’s because doctors are trained that way. Young and newly qualified doctors are encouraged by consultants to order all available tests perhaps to keep the laboratories in business, a case one hand washing the other. Little thought is given to the costs of all these tests to the patient.

Secondly, doctors order tests in order to impress their patients, colleagues, students and, of course, themselves, Coleman says. 

Thirdly, doctors frequently order unnecessary tests because they are planning to write papers for medical journals and they need lots of data to fill up the pages and make themselves look clever. Lastly, tests are done to protect doctors from litigation or possible accusations of negligence.

The moral is simple, Dr Coleman says, if your doctor arranges for tests to be done, ask him or her if they are really necessary. If the answer is no, then what is the point?

You can read more of Vernon Coleman’s opinions about anything and everything on his website http://www.vernoncoleman.com

Zimbabwe going down the drain... again?

Ostriches can't fly but so does Air Zimbabwe

There are some of us who have entered 2012 with a sense of trepidation. They believe this is the year when a decadent earth will collapse into itself. I predicted the same for Zanu PF, but Mother Earth? The bible says no one knows the day or the hour when the Son of Man will come.

For the time being one should live each moment to the full and do good for fellow mankind. Don’t listen to those who are creating a multi-billion dollar industry out of scaring people. There even is a movie entitled “2012” that graphically portrays the destruction of the world as we know it. It relives mankind’s worst fears…earthquakes, floods, fires, the works. But then I ask, what’s new? We already have a fair share of death and destruction… most of it man-made. Haven't we seen it all.

Mankind has become suicidal. We seem to have adopted the motto ‘Live today as if there is no tomorrow.’ To borrow Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono’s favourite cliché: Guess what; there is a tomorrow that not only we can look forward to, but have a duty to protect for future generations to come.

There are a lot of things that we will never understand. If we knew all life’s secrets, we would hasten the end of the world egoistic as we are. We are so destructively selfish that we do not care as to what our actions would lead to as long as we believe we are not on the receiving end. Take the fact that God endowed Zimbabwe with unfathomable mineral riches. Minerals that would easily take the country out of the rut it is in if the revenue were properly channelled to the government. We are assuming here that it would be secure there than in someone else’s pocket.

Yet we are robbed blind by a few self-centred individuals whose preoccupation is to wallow in the belief that we owe them a living. We marvel at their ill-gotten riches that they flaunt while announcing to all and sundry that ‘they were not born poor!’ There is nothing more traitorous than for such people to personalise state resources while they perpetuate the crisis in order to cover up for their travesty.

Zimbabwe is in trouble as a country because there are those whose very existence is dependent on the status quo remaining what it is. Where there is chaos they will thrive. There are things happening in this country that defy logic. Air Zimbabwe, a pale shadow of its former self is barely gasping yet a basic knowledge of economics tells us that it should have been sold.

Those who defend its existence claiming that this would be hawking the family jewels have a crooked definition of the world jewel. The national airline, or what is left of it, has gone way below the status of a rural chicken bus.

It remains a mystery why none of their planes has ever dropped out of the sky. Is it because of the fact that it takes 120 people to service a single Air Zimbabwe plane? I bet you one of these expert’s function is to blow cockroaches out of the aircraft’s avionics. Aren’t we just embarrassed that the South African Taxi Association has managed, or is about to launch an airline of their own?

Our only consolation, perhaps, is that at its worst, the airline came short of allowing passengers to enter the cabin with goats, chickens and bags of grain like used to happen in West Africa is those days of yore. Air Zimbabwe has become a metaphor for failure and like the dodo, a bird that could not fly, it will surely become extinct.

From the mid-eighties Zimbabwe had perfected the knack for creating monstrosities in the name of state enterprise even where they were not needed. Someone thought of another scheme to siphon state funds in the mould of NOCZIM, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. Enter the Zimbabwe National Road Agency, ZINARA, which is supposed to construct and maintain the nation’s roads, a misnomer by any definition.

What roads? - would be a good question to ask. Anyone who has driven on the roads in Zimbabwe will tell you that they are arguably the worst. In some parts of the country, the roads are simply impassable, in some, they no longer exist. A giraffe is said to have disappeared into one drum-hole. It becomes something of a national crisis if the highways become gullies and are evidently the cause of numerous fatalities. It then begs the question: what the heck is ZINARA doing?

There was a time when the mere existence of a ministry of roads and transport was enough to look after our roads. Now where was the logic of creating a whole new entity whose first act is to acquire a shiny fleet of vehicles for the executives? This is all before we could smell bitumen.

The tolls that are levied on the highways by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, ZIMRA, are supposed be going into the coffers of ZINARA to pay for fixing the roads. The only time when the public knew anything about revenue from toll gates was when ZIMRA employees tasked with collecting the toll fees were caught with their hands in the till and had managed to divert more than a million dollars into their pockets. A MILLION DOLLARS! You can feed a whole province with that kind of money.

In the midst of it all ZINARA adds ore to the confusion by declaring that they were blacklisting a number of local authorities for the abuse of the so-called Road Fund. Now where is the accountability or transparency in all this? Why is it that all we hear about does not directly translate into safe and sound roads that we are supposed to be paying for through road levies and toll fees?

One is often reminded of another miscreation, the National Oil Corporation of Zimbabwe, NOCZIM, which despite clear evidence that we have not yet struck oil, was shoved down our throats. NOCZIM had the dubious distinction of creating one of the most devastating fuel shortages this country has ever experienced before it was embarrassingly terminated. The parastatal proved to be the most blatant siphoning of state resources into the pockets of a few.

At the height of the shortages, panic turned into desperation as very prominent politicians were dispatched to the mountains to seek divine intervention of a traditional kind. If the images of shoeless leaders witnessing pure diesel gushing from a rock that are awash in the blogosphere are any accurate, then it explains why Zimbabwe is in the mess it is in.

And to add to the diversion, has the role of Zimbabwe Republic Police, ZRP's traffic cops been amended to include the mandatory collection of spot fines on the roads? Is it true that traffic police have each been given a daily target to collect from errant motorists? If it is then one can see why Zimbabwe has the highest number of road blocks per kilometre on the planet. Did I mention that they were also corrupt?

Just come to think of it, all these entities with wierd acronyms - ZINARA, ZRP,ZIMRA, NOCZIM,ZANU-PF, AIR-ZIM - are giving us nothing but nasty indigestion.Was just saying.