AGAIN we commemorate Workers’ Day.
The mischievous, rather the dangerous among us, would want to say we have nothing to celebrate.
But that is an outright lie.
For more than a decade our economy has been battered by illegal sanctions imposed on us by the European Union and US at the behest of Britain in protest over the Land Reform Programme which saw the indigenes reclaim their stolen land.
As we write elsewhere in the paper, we have a new economy in place.
It is an economy largely run by sons and daughters of the soil.
Of course we continue to struggle to get our economy fully functional.
Most important is that we are not sitting on our laurels.
We are working day and night to become a nation that is not dependent on outsiders.
We have become our own masters, our own bosses.
It is incorrect to say we have no workers in the country.
The workers we have in the country are being disregarded and not considered workers simply because the man, the woman at the helm, superintending them is black.
It is time we recognise our workers, it is time we redefine the word ‘worker’ or ‘employee’.
Because one works for a black woman or man and not a white person does not make him/her any less a worker.
Indigenisation has been turned into a vile word simply because we took a conscious decision, informed by our struggles, to indigenise our economy.
We continue to occupy our economic spaces and that occupation does not frighten us.
We are not at all intimidated by the enormity of the exercise.
Just as we took up arms and successfully stormed the massive edifice called Rhodesia, so will we fully takeover our economy.
I will remind my fellow countrymen and women this Workers’ Day that Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Programmes seek to help us have a firm footing in the economic arena.
And it is encouraging and heart-warming that those entrusted by our ancestors to be custodians of our legacy, our leadership, which is spearheading the various economic programmes have not buckled under pressure or backtracked even when it seems the best thing to do.
We have refused to be treated like children who are assuaged by offals while the adults, the West, munch and feast on the mutton.
The word ‘indigenisation’ has sent different signals to different people, but to us, it is very clear.
We understand it, it means taking over ownership of our resources, managing their extraction and determining their disposal and how they benefit us.
The word ‘indigenisation’ boils down to owning and managing what we rightfully inherited from our forefathers and mothers.
It is no secret that for years Western corporations unashamedly siphoned our wealth in vast proportions while our communities remained impoverished.
Kamativi and Mutorashanga are some of the painful examples of how foreign multinationals looted our wealth and left the communities poorer than they were before the extraction of minerals.
Our message this Workers’ Day is that Zimbabwe will never compromise or mortgage its resources because they are the mainstay of the nation.
A nation that will allow its resources to be plundered by outsiders will be doing an injustice to its people and the future generations.
Such a nation will never be respected, but bullied in the family of nations.
It will always be bullied by other nations which have economic might.
It is a fallacy to talk of power that is not backed by wealth.
A poor nation cannot defend its people, protect its resources and guarantee its own safety and well-being.
A poor country cannot determine its future, history and its identity.
Whatever people perceive indigenisation to be, the most important thing is that it is driven by the people because resources belong to people and we will always unashamedly champion the cause of the people.
Nobody said it is going to be an easy road, but let us continue to work hard for our country and posterity.