APRIL is a special month in our country.

We attained independence on April 18 1980 and we take this time to honour our heroes and heroines as we take our memories back to the past.

We relive events of the past as we bow our heads in honour of our brave sons and daughters of the soil who gave their all in order to free Zimbabwe. 

Indeed, dislodging the Ian Smith regime was no walk in the park.

We celebrate our heroes and heroines’ achievements and their efforts in restoring our dignity and honour as the true owners of our country.

We cherish their bravery.

However, as we do so, we must be siezed with the compelling fact that we owe our freedom to their gallantry and that we have a duty to preserve their legacy.

We are custodians of the legacy they left us – a legacy of independence, unity, freedom and the legacy of ownership of land as well as the means of production.

We are a country that was under colonial bondage for many years.

We are a country that fought our way to the independence we enjoy today.

The legacy of that historic liberation struggle can never be washed or wished away.

It should, and will, remain with us till eternity and it is that legacy of the struggle that binds us.

No amount of denigrating that liberation struggle can erase that overwhelming part of our history.

Time and again, we should be bound by that history to do what is right for our country.

Time and again, we should be bound by that past to defend our history.

We should stand in the present and walk into the future armed by the values and virtues of that struggle.

Our gallant sons and daughters of the soil were not blind, however, to the dispossession of their people, an issue that they took head on through confronting the enemy; physically, militarily, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.

Let us never forget the dispossession of our land.

The tribal trust lands, for example, were a colonial creation of the Tribal Trust Land Act of 1961, stemming from the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and creating fixed boundaries for white-owned land vi-a-vis reserves.

These reserves were infertile and unsuitable for any form of agriculture.

However, we now have our land back and we are using it, knowing fully well that it came through bloodshed.

That is one thing we must never forget and that should inspire us to be productive on our land.

Indeed, we must never give our detractors room to attack us by forever jealously guarding our land.

As we do so, we must always be armed by the fact that our land did not come on a silver platter. 

Therefore, let us remain united as Zimbabweans in order to safeguard our country from the enemy.  

Let us always remember that Zimbabwe is priceless.