By MAKWETI SISHEKANU
THIRD world countries, Zambia included, are naturally endowed with wealth in the earth; meaning they have the seed, and attempts to be fruitful are there. Unfortunately, the problem is multiplying and replenishing.There is no multiplication in the developing countries’ resources. Resources are being extracted and depleted in their raw form and exported to the west where multiplication (value addition) is completed by converting the raw materials into processed products.
The secret to economic development is clearly unlocked – it is in the God-given natural law: “Be fruitful (productive), multiply, fill the earth (replenish), subdue and have dominion.” This explains why most African countries are poor despite sleeping on vast wealth in form of minerals, oil, timber, fish, water and land.
You can understand why developing economies are still dependent on foreign donor aid despite the vast mineral and oil wealth lying in the soil – lack of multiplication and dominion.
Donor aid deprives an economy of the capacity to multiply, dominate and replenish.
This leaves the source of the resource (local community) with massive populations of poor and jobless people. Knowingly or unknowingly, the developed economies have fully exploited this principle to be where they are today.
Their education systems, economic and trade policies are all tailored to strengthen this God-given law; so plain and natural that you do not need to be a Christian miracle worker to be prosperous! It will apply and work at all levels – individual, group, communal and national.
The spirit of poverty kills this very cycle by abrogating the law of fruitfulness, replenishment, multiplication, subjugation and dominion. It strips people of their inherent power to think logically; to be fruitful and multiply – leaving them vulnerable to oppression since they cannot have dominion on what they produce.
They have no control over their own natural resources. For Africa in general, colonisation and slave trade cultivated this spirit to such depths that today we do not realise how much it is entrenched in our policy documents, education systems and the churches which are expected to know better.
If this be the time to exorcise this spirit, the secret lies with the youths recognising the core of the problem.
Capitalism thrives on this very God-given natural law. Unfortunately, it eliminates the weak from the cycle of being fruitful, replenish, multiplying, subduing and having dominion. In a capitalist system, the rich become richer and the poor become even poorer, yet all are created in the image of the same God.
This reflects the plight of Hebrew slaves while they were in Egypt. They intensely laboured day and night to produce for Pharaoh what they themselves never owned. Despite their fruitful productivity and immense contribution to the Egyptian economy at the time, they never commanded dominion over what they produced; perpetuating their subjugation and poverty.
The spirit of poverty indoctrinates people to believe with all their minds, might and soul that poverty is the will of God and a passport to heaven.
The greatest hurdle in overcoming the stubborn spirit of poverty lies in the traditional churches; still preaching poverty as a divine heavenly requirement.
What makes the indoctrination worse is the fact that a lot of unemployed poor youths today attend church not out of deep-rooted faith but as consolation that God will work out miracles for them out of mercy.
To many of them, church membership and attendance are a social hobby! The church, therefore, has a critical role to play beginning with the exorcism of this spirit in the youths at individual level.
Therefore, poverty should not be narrowly conceived as a socio-economic problem requiring charitable donations, handouts and aid to alleviate.
It’s a matter deeply embedded in the whole earth system from nature, connected to socio-ecology and economics. But “my people perish for lack of knowledge” …Hosea 4:6.
The author is an environmental expert currently working for the Zambia National Farmers Union. He can be contacted on makwetiskanu@yahoo.com.
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