THE battles we have fought protecting our interests and sovereignty as a country have rekindled the Zimbabwean fighting spirit that saw us take up the baton from the First Chimurenga and prevail in the Second Chimurenga, as well as the Third Chimurenga that saw us repossess our stolen land.
We have successfully built a Zimbabwe anchored in hard work and resilience.
We have remained ourselves in the family of nations without apologising for who we are.
Indeed, we are a peace-loving nation.
Let us not lose our bearings, but continue to maintain our sense of purpose and patriotism in our nation, especially among the youth.
We have made great strides in efforts to own our resources.
We maybe struggling now, but indigenes are in control of the resources.
A majority of miners, small-scale they might be, are indigenes.
Gold output is on the increase and majority producers are sons and daughters of the soil.
In education, we have revisited our curriculum so that we truly become masters of our own destiny.
Colonial and post-colonial education alienated us from our culture, economy and heritage.
The curriculum was designed in a way that continued to serve interests of colonials while all discourses placed the West at that centre intellectually, culturally, socially, politically and economically.
It was a system designed to make our children, scholars and everyone else see development only happening inside the Western framework.
A majority of us now know the whiteman for who he is.
Under the stewardship of the current leadership of the country, we have liberated ourselves from mental slavery, just as Bob Marley implored us during our independence celebrations in 1980.
We must continue on that path of re-thinking and re-writing our curriculum and history in our own terms so that we fully benefit.
We must continue to indigenise our intellectual resources fast, just like we seized our natural resources.
Our development and empowerment can never be complete if we fail to indigenise our intellectual space.
It is no secret that books about the exploits and heroics of the West have been fed to us while our values, traditions and beliefs have been painted as diabolic and retrogressive.
Our very own stories, chronicling our exploits and victories, have been sidelined.
The objective of Western education and ideology imposed on us was not designed to make us a great people but to perpetually make us feel inferior and less human, ashamed of our history as a people.
It is our task as Zimbabweans to let the song of indigenisation, education and empowerment continue to ring loud.
The song must not die, but continue to echo in our ears for eternity while guiding future generations.
Just as we took the initiative from the 1890s, right up to 1980, let us continue on the trajectory that will make us the light of Africa.
In the same spirit that we fought for our independence, let us fight for total economic emancipation.