GOVERNMENT is keeping its word and fulfilling the promises it made to the students at institutions of higher learning.
That is most commendable and must be celebrated.
Indeed the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
It is most gratifying that among priorities is the issue of supporting our students, especially those in tertiary institutions.
Defending Zimbabwe and its wealth and developing it to become a leading nation will require us to take the struggle to a higher level.
Our children must be educated, for we must take the struggles of Chimurenga to new intellectual trajectories and this will ensure that future generations will continue with the country’s rich legacy.
It is in this spirit that we must tap the rich resources of Zimbabwean scholarship as it exists today.
As we assist our students, Zimbabwean scholarship should set the appropriate research agenda.
It is time we research and celebrate our own knowledge systems, time we embrace the ‘indigenous knowledge systems’.
As I have said in the past, our scholarship should create new theories and new thinking which builds upon the monumental achievements.
Our academic leaders must create sufficient space for young scholars to fully develop into highly productive citizens.
There are many think tanks in the West superintendend by scholars that are shaping the discourse of their nations and we must do the same.
Our scholars must inform and help all our institutions, industry, the medical fraternity and agriculture to maximise production.
As a nation, we desire wealth and quality services and these, we must fight and work for.
A fruitful and satisfactory life will not be handed to us by the Americans or the British, we will have to sweat for it.
We cannot look up to the US and UK, we must look to ourselves.
For it is, none but ourselves!
The battles, the difficult ones, have already been fought for us and what is demanded of us is consolidation of our achievements.
I appeal to our scholars to take up and be actively involved in our discourses, to be part of the agenda of shaping our nation to become a force to reckon with.
We are all in the process of rekindling the Zimbabwean spirit, of restoring confidence in ourselves, we want to be ourselves in the family of nations and not apologise for who we are and it should begin with our scholars.
We want our scholars to leave the institutions of learning with a strong sense of purpose and patriotism.
Our new struggle is intensely cerebral, calling for the highest level of intellectual endeavour, mastery and excellence in scholarship.
I will repeat what I have said in the past: We have to ideologically and intellectually engage the same enemy whom we beat on the battlefield.
We have to intellectually engage the same enemy who retreated from our farms and now engages us from the safety of publishing houses, research institutes and cultural centres in various parts of the world.