WE are in the enchanting season of graduations.
When a person receives an education, he or she is empowered.
The idea is to transform him/her into a better citizen.
Zimbabwe will do well and emerge victorious because her children, the boy-child and girl-child, have received and continue to receive, equal opportunities.
We have not been afraid to embark on the various programmes of empowerment such as indigenisation because we believe in the capabilities of our people.
We take our hats off to those who have joined the world of academic excellence.
We give our heartfelt congratulations to those entering the world of knowledge.
Knowledge is power but it has to be exercised.
Thus I find it disturbing that there are some in our midst who have become masters at influencing our graduates to rebel and ‘fight’ the Government for not creating opportunities for them.
Government has created an environment that lets them get an education and valuable skills.
The same Government has availed them opportunities in all sectors of the economy.
We are a self-sufficient people lacking nothing.
Our people can run existing technologies and create new ones.
There are opportunities in mining, agriculture and technology.
We are a nation that has so much that still needs to be done.
The thousands being churned out of tertiary institutions cannot only be good and designed to be employees.
The thousands of acres that have minerals await to be exploited, not by outsiders but by our people.
In agriculture and related fields, graduates must bring new innovations to curb the rampant effects of climate change.
Crop scientists must establish more advanced drought-resistant seeds, while the engineers develop more irrigation technology and modernise our approach to agriculture.
Those who have finished business studies should meet head-on the challenges and craft strategies to solve the problems suffocating the economy.
There are also loads of opportunities in the Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector.
This engine presently driving the economy needs to be perfected to take the economy to the next level.
With fresh knowledge from our graduates, the SMEs sector can leap where other nations crawled.
There is the manufacturing sector.
Statutory Instrument 64 (SI64) of 2016, is in place and there is no reason we cannot manufacture our own products and create our own brands that will go on to conquer the world markets.
Already a number of youths have taken up farming and mining, providing a clear example that this is no fantasy or wishful thinking.
Our misfortune has been that of people who want to place Europe and America at the centre of human experience, human existence and human development.
Dubai, not so many years ago, was a desert.
Our graduates must believe in themselves and not carry the illusions and delusions that have been foisted on us throughout years of colonial bondage.
We do not need the whiteman to come from some foreign land and give our graduates jobs.
Let us take a leaf from the Asians and Arabs who have learnt to be themselves throughout the ages.
They, in a short space of time, made huge technological strides.
We must stop weeping and expending energies crafting not so funny messages and videos about our graduates.
An empowered and educated African makes life ‘difficult’ for Westerners, who in delusions of grandeur have made themselves rulers not only of their countries, but the world.
Education is the spear that has struck and burst the bubble of the whiteman.
It must carry us to the stars.