By Wilbert Mukori- “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull!” said W C Fields.

This Zanu PF government has mastered the art of baffling with bull to the t!

“Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Dr John Mangwiro yesterday dispelled assertions from some quarters that Government was understating the number of deaths from the deadly pandemic. He said such reports were false, mischievous and a clear attempt to cause alarm and despondency in the country,” reported The Herald.

“Government has got representation all over the country. Our health system is well organised from the minister, it goes to the deputy minister, permanent secretary and each town has got a representative and each province has a representative called a provincial medical director,” said the Deputy Minister.

“Our systems are so well organised, well-oiled such that we collect data easily. We get accurate figures and information every time we need it.”

The official corona virus cases and deaths are only of those who would have been tested for the virus and the result was positive. And so one can keep the figures down by reducing the number of corona virus tests carried out! 

In December 2020, at the onset of the current corona virus wave, SA (whose corona virus cases will be similar to ours given the heavy human traffic, legal and illegal, across our common border) was carrying out over 44 000 test per day. Zimbabwe, with 1/4 SA’s population, should have ramped up its tests to 11 000 per day but only doing 1 500 tests, 10%, on a really busy day! Well one easy way.

Dadaya High School had corona virus cases and the powers that be send out 47 test kits when everyone of 1 000 students and staff could have been infected and therefore should have been tested. The school closed and every one was went back to their homes without ever being tested. 

The consequence of failing to test, trace and track is that infected individuals who, if tested and found to have the virus would be put into isolation, are allowed to mix with the rest, freely. And thus, they would, unknowingly, spread the virus far and wide.   

The World Health Organisation recommended that all those showing corona virus symptoms must be tested of the virus; that is common sense. The question the Deputy Minister of Health should have answered is why has Zimbabwe with it’s “well organised and well-oiled” system failed to test even those clear cut cases common sense would dictate must be tested? 

Instead of answering the pertinent question the Deputy Minister of Health is now trying to bamboozle the nation with details of the data collecting chain of command. If tests were not being carried out then there is no data to be collected and so the efficiency or otherwise of the latter is of no consequence! 

There is no doubt that Zimbabwe’s REAL corona virus cases and deaths are far higher than the official figures and it is the real figures that affect real people.

Zimbabwe was in a serious economic and political mess before the corona virus outbreak after 40 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawless under this Zanu PF dictatorship. And so with its economy in total meltdown and its health care services in shambles everyone knew the country was going to be hit very hard by the corona virus. 

Now, it turns out, Zanu PF’s obsession with hiding facts to hide the regime’s blundering incompetence has turned the corona virus tragedy into a catastrophe of Biblical proportion!  

Whilst few nations, if any have been spared corona virus’s devastating economic, health and death blows; there is no denying (Zanu PF’s pathetic attempts to understate the effects must be dismissed with the contempt they deserve) Zimbabwe has been crashed! All because the country has a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical government and 40 years of misrule has left the nation economical and political weak and feeble!  

If anything positive can ever be said to come out of the tragic human suffering and deaths brought on by corona virus; then it must be that the pandemic focused Zimbabweans to finally address the nation’s number one problem of bad governance.