As someone who spent a good chunk of his childhood years in Zimbabwe, and who holds very fond memories of the country, I always have an eye open for developments happening in that spot of southern Africa.

Unfortunately, the news coming out of there for the past couple of decades has been nothing short of depressing most of the time, as the country continues to be driven deeper into crisis by a leader who totally lost the plot, and went from a position in which he’d have been regarded as a great man in the country’s history to yet another dictator whose end will be greatly celebrated.

However, a quirky piece of news grabbed my attention about a new initiative that’s being introduced in Zimbabwe.

The Government has introduced a new initiative that should see all male Cabinet ministers undergoing circumcision; Members of Parliament and councillors are also earmarked for the second round of the exercise.

There is a reason behind this, which is that it’s part of a new programme that seeks to promote this mode of fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS. According to research, male circumcision is one of the ways of preventing the spread of the virus with reports indicating that the reduction can be up to 60 percent.

Pretty extreme take on leading by example, and yet another instance of the kind of madness the likes of Mugabe and Gadhafi represent.

But imagine if this initiative was taken and applied as a policy across the world, not to promote HIV/AIDS prevention, but rather to promote recycling of governments and ministers? I bet if ministers and members of parliament had to get circumcised at the beginning of every new term in government, past their initial one, we’d see a lot less of them clinging on to their seats, and a lot more fresh blood in governments (no pun intended).