FOR 37 years we have not been idle.
We have been hard at work, mostly engaged in efforts to preserve and maintain our sovereignty.
But not only have we fought hard to preserve our independence, we have also wrestled to improve our lives in all spheres.
In a land of plenty, we have not been content with crumbs.
Zimbabwe is among nations that have been liberated in the truest sense of the ideals of independence and freedom.
Soon after the acquisition of independence by many African states, former colonisers murmured that ‘if only they had known that it was the independence of the flag that Africans wanted, there would have been no need for wars, they would simply have handed the flag over’.
They could not believe their good fortune for after bitter liberation struggles, which they lost, they still remained firmly in control of the wealth of African nations.
I have said for 37 years we have not been idle because in that time we have recorded significant gains.
The naysayer will be quick to point out the numerous challenges we are presently grappling with!
Ours is a 37-year-old nation battered left and right by nations more than 300 years old.
And we are still on our feet.
What makes me sad, or rather infuriates me, is failure by some of us to see the significance of the strides we have made.
It is a fact that generations to come will not have to fight many battles.
Future generations will not have to fight for political independence.
They will not fight for land.
Like the barons of England and tycoons of the US, they will inherit land, they will have it handed to them.
They will not have to fight for economic independence, the economic space is being liberated.
Their skills, desires, ambitions, grand plans and wildest dreams will know no bounds.
What keeps some of us going, everyday determined to fight and not give in, are the questions that will be asked of us 20 years, 50 years, 100 years from today.
I do not want, zvamuchose, is to have future generations wondering what their forefathers and mothers did with their time.
What our country is going through is a revolution no different from the one that has now given us 37 years as a self-determining people.
Revolutions are bloody and come in many forms.
Had the sons and daughters of the soil, who buried hundreds of people in mass graves at Chimoio, Tembwe and Nyadzonia, decided they could not stand the pain.
On losing limbs, had they decided to stop fighting.
On losing loved ones, had they decided to retreat.
On losing toes to matekenya, had they decided to give in, go back cap in hand and apologise to the Rhodesians.
Had they done that.
Had they given up.
Had they stopped and conceded defeat.
Where would we be?
What would we be?
When would we have found respite from the yoke of colonialism — remember they had declared a 1 000 years before we could breathe?
In that moment of silence, of bliss and tranquility, far from the madding crowd, make an attempt to answer one or two of these important questions
Many endured and persevered so that 37 years later a child could be born and thrive in a land in which being black is no longer a crime.