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Economics or schadenfreude?

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It’s almost a month since a close friend lost his two beautiful and vicious dogs. They just woke up one morning throwing up all over the place and foaming at the mouth. They had obviously been poisoned. I had never once seen a man so distraught, weeping over loss of life of animals. Of course, life is life and to have it so unfeelingly snuffed out can be a most traumatic ordeal. Somewhere in the middle of much weeping and cursing emerged the opinion that whoever did this must have had a strong motive. Maybe they wanted to come back and steal something. I wondered to myself if dog killers and people who are cruel to animals always have justifiable motive.

The deputy RBZ governor Edward Mashiringwana was reported by the Independent to have seized Friedawill farm near Chinhoyi while the owner was absent. He reportedly refused to allow the SPCA to feed the animals. This led the pigs, demented by thirst and hunger, to consume their young. Did Mashiringwana have any particular motive in refusing to let these animals be helped, or just a senseless heartless thrill that doesn’t necessarily benefit anything?

I can draw parallels to the business of the Chinese An Yue Jiang whose whereabouts some of us are no longer sure of, but are pretty certain is eager to offload its cargo no matter what. That is if it hasn’t already if loudmouth Matonga’s claims are anything to go by. Everyone knows the situation going down here, but it seems to have fallen on deaf Chines ears that those weapons of mass destruction are intended to annihilate innocent civilians whose crime was simply expressing new political interests through the ballot. One wonders what’s the motive in this case or they simply don’t care? Or is it a case of letting the poor country self- destruct, then come in for easy plunder. But of what? Nothing hardly lives here and they have already literally flooded our market with defective Chinese zhing zhong rejects.

China is itself currently in mourning over the thousands of its people who lost their lives to its worst earthquake in three decades. It is sad how the nation mourns, how survivors are living on handouts at the roadside. I extend deep condolences to the people of China. Life is too precious to be so needlessly and violently lost. I hope they feel the same way too for others outside themselves.

Because, while I’m not accusing them of schadenfreude, it is nevertheless a sad irony that the people of China don’t seem to hold the Zimbabwean lives, which stand to be lost needlessly to the selfish interest of a cruel few, as important as their own.

Could the Chinese not lobby their government to stop the supply of arms to Zimbabwe? Or is business to go on as business, ahead of all else? Because the moment those weapons aboard the An Yue Jiang touch down, Zimbabwe, landlocked as it is will have an earthquake of its own, the kind entailing massive blood bath and purely man made.

My most cynical colleagues believe that justice has a strange and most unusual way of prevailing sometimes. According to them the Chinese have paid with the lives of their own for the innocent lives they would indirectly help annihilate through support of an oppressive government that will stop at nothing to get revenge on an electorate that simply fell out of love with it. I think there is nothing just about any undeserved death. If only we all valued life and the right to self-determination.

Currently the Chinese are also embroiled in a long-standing dispute with the Tibetans whom they just won’t allow to be an independent state. Their respect for the lives of others really becomes questionable to some of us. I mean, aside from their fear of losing face, what is stopping China from granting Tibet the genuine autonomy it desires. Alternately, in the case of Zimbabwe, are money and diplomatic politics more important than life?

*Schadenfreude, German word to describe taking pleasure in others’ misfortune

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