By Sherphard Majengeta
TO achieve Vision 2030 of an upper middle income economy our resolve as a nation, as a people must now, on every scale, register as unstoppable.
Speaking during the liberation struggle the late former President Robert Mugabe ruling out foreign assistance in terms of fighting men, said: “We believe that the war must be fought by us. It is our war, the struggle is our struggle. The Zimbabweans must feel the pride of dismantling and defeating the enemy … otherwise where lies the glory? The pride that we have fought for our country and won it?”.
And President Emmerson Mnangagwa has even been more clearer saying:We are embarking on a journey toward real growth, to empower our people with skills, opportunities and jobs. We will continue taking bold steps to liberalize and introduce greater market forces, building an economy in which enterprise is allowed, encouraged and protected. If we are to succeed in this global economy, we must empower our entrepreneurs and foster innovation at every level.
It must not be forgotten by every Zimbabwean, every patriot that the lowering of the Union Jack and the subsequent hoisting of the new Zimbabwe’s green, gold, black, red and white flag signified the transition from violence to peace, from bondage to freedom, from subservience to independence.
And since then our work as a nation has been transforming our political independence into economic empowerment for the people and to protect those gains.
The occasional eruption of violence, mischief of all sort that we have witnessed between 1980 and today is a spontaneous response to the agenda of the liberation war, total independence in all spheres social, political and economic.
I dare say that if the so-called opposition in the country was nationalistic and embraced the objectives of the liberation war, our situation would be similar to that of the Republicans and the Democrats in the US or the Conservatives and Labour in the UK.
They are fundamentally agreed over policy and only differ over ways of implementing those policies.
The same does not apply with the opposition in the country.
The opposition has actually become a threat to the objectives of the liberation war because it seeks to stop implementation of the programmes Zimbabweans went to war for.
Whilst they may try to deny it hiding behind murky political manifestos, their operations prove beyond doubt that they are driving our former colonisers’ agenda.
The ZANLA and ZIPRA combatants successfully wrested the copyright of the struggle from British and other Wester authors.
It is time we do the same, many notable developments have taken place in our beloved country but are we telling that story, the success story.
Our people and the world must know that a small nation we may be, hamstrung by illegal sanctions, but we are moving forward, we have not been bogged down.
We are marching towards Vision 2030 and who should tell black Africans the story of black African resistance to unrelenting imperial forces?
Does it make any sense that the only credible or balanced story of black empowerment and development should be one that demonises programmes seeking to uplift the masses?
Should the only acceptable story come from opposition politicians and activists.
In African history books, written for African children, by African authors, informed by African experience, the Zimbabwean story should be ranked among the finest in the world for ours is the story of resistance and resilience at its best.
it must be made clear to all and sundry that this is not about President Mnangagwa and his Government but about us as Zimbabweans and knowing what is good for us.
I am glad many people today now see the truth about these Western countries.
They are vultures and are very good at establishing puppets in Africa and where they fail remain relentless in bashing governments that refuse to be bullied.
We must not be fooled by concepts such as neoliberal globalisation
Neoliberal globalisation far from being a new world order, in practice, is a continuation of old imperial relations under a new name.
Neo-liberalism has brought gross ecological despoliation and robbed many nations of fair market value for their natural resources.
It abandoned the public good and reformulated economics into an autistic science of private profit accumulation.
It has unleashed what the Uruguayan essayist, Eduardo Galeano, has called genocide on the peoples of the periphery.
To achieve Vision 2030 Zimbabweans need to know that they are in charge and no one else and that they must do it for themselves and that no outsider will do it for us.