Donors can keep HIV drugs, we’ve Magaya’s concoction! 

THIS week, the world stood in awe and admiration of Zimbabwe as The Great Prophet Walter Magaya announced that he had succeeded where many nations, including developed ones, have failed: finding a cure for Aids and cancer.

MUCKRAKER
Twitter: @MuckrakerZim

For years, the world has sought a cure for these diseases in vain. Billions have been spent by powerful nations trying to find a cure. In fact, Muckraker read a report that says between 2000 and 2015, the world spent a trillion dollars on the HIV pandemic, from trying to find a cure to treatment. America spends US$26 billion a year on this problem.

All these well-funded labs they have in America, Britain and other G7 nations, failed — only for the cure to be found right here at Zindoga. Imagine, of all places.

As some haters in the Good Book asked, “what good could come out of Nazareth?”, we now have modern-day detractors asking what good could come out of Zindoga. Now we have all manner of people, such as pharmacists and doctors, who are going after The Great Prophet doubting his cure? What do pharmacists and doctors know about medicine?

Zimbabwe gets some US$500 million from donors every year to fight Aids and other diseases. We are happy to announce that donors can now keep their money. We have Aguma now, the cure. As for the Aids levy, which is deducted from workers’ salaries, it raises over US$30 million annually. Good news: we don’t even have to pay that tax anymore.

The Doubting Thomases at Muckraker’s rather dry watering hole, however, are still confused as to why we still have so many problems in the country, when Magaya took all of them and carried them off to Israel in his satchel.

Miracle cure

There has, predictably, been widespread condemnation of Magaya’s snake-oil medication. The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’ Association, the National Aids Council, the Retail Pharmacists’ Association, and even the US embassy as well as the UN representative in Zimbabwe, among many other faithless detractors, have rubbished the miracle cure.

Thank heaven for the group of journalists, brimming with faith, that have called on the authorities to give Magaya’s concoction a chance. The fact that, in medicine, it is not for the authorities to test every claim from a drug manufacturer, but that it is in fact up to the manufacturer to put their product through the process, is not something a journalist is required to bother with.

It was pleasing to hear the Ministry of Health saying it does not tolerate fake things. Great. We now await news on the Health minister Obediah Moyo’s qualifications. We can’t have people walking around claiming he is just as phoney as Magaya’s herbs.

Economic genius

Muckraker was delighted to read in the state media that basic goods were already flooding the market, just two days after the government announced, in a masterstroke of economic genius, that imports were now allowed.

This is the sort of quick economic turnaround we have been begging President Emmerson Mnangagwa to pull off for the past year.

Now, since Mnangagwa still insisted that the bond note or RTGS is at par with the US dollar, we wait to see how grocers that buy goods in foreign currency will be able to sell them for bond notes and transfers. That will be yet another chapter for Zanu PF, which has re-written the world’s books on economic management with its miracle economic cures.

And what better way for ZBC to show the world that there is no hunger in Zimbabwe than to send Rueben Barwe to report on food? The only thing that might be a problem is if he tried to demonstrate the belt tightening we have all been instructed to do by the country’s owners.
Let’s all tighten our belts!

Chamisa’s invisible flame

The nation was overjoyed last weekend when pigeons were seen on the head of the leader of the opposition, Nelson Chamisa. He also managed to light a flame, which for some reason was invisible.

The best account of the entire affair was in a local daily, which dutifully reported that “as he delivered his speech, four doves flew over his head catching his attention and that of his supporters who thronged Gwanzura Stadium”. As for the flame, the paper went on, Chamisa had to “rely on his supporters’ feedback to tell him that the flame had successfully been lit owing to the poor vision caused by the sweltering October sun”.

The Herald is clearly not alone in the business of fiction writing.