IWE neni tine basa/mina lawe silomsebenzi.
Zimbabwe ndeye ropa, IZimbabwe yabuya ngegazi.
Pasi nevatengesi/phansi labathengisi.
These are not just words Mr Eddie Cross.
Some of us cannot sit still or keep quiet when the struggle that brought the country’s independence is cheapened and treated as a nonevent.
For some of us the struggle is not a memory it is a reality that we live with everyday.
The pain we felt when Napalm bombs landed on us we still feel, the absence of the limb lost at the Chimoio Massacre is still keenly felt.
Many of us still wake up with tears on the pillow.
Mr Cross thanks to democracy you can write that you hoped that this year’s independence celebrations would be more than empty memories of past liberation war achievements and sacrifice.
Mr Cross kana gandanga rinonzi Robert Mugabe rotaura nyaya yehondo harisi kuropodza, ririkuedza kunyaradza, kupa donhodzo kune vazhinji vachine marwadzo.
We have everything to celebrate.
If nothing else we will continue to celebrate that victory and we do it unashamedly.
After 50 years, after a 100 years, after a 1 000 years the story of the liberation will be told and celebrated, it will not die.
No success shall be mentioned without retelling this all important event.
It’s a story you have to live with Mr Cross.
This country, we will report till kingdom come, is ours and its resources will never be exploited by outsiders without benefitting us.
Hutungamiriri hwenyika ino hauna kukundikana, tinodaro isu vana vevhu.
Taking back our stolen land is a huge success.
Determining how our resources will be exploited is a success.
Let us not be fooled by arguments that what good is the land and resources on their own.
The economy is still struggling and services are not yet up to scratch but this is not because of lack of will to improve and get better but concerted efforts by the West to suffocate us.
People like Mr Cross will never stop or tire of making light of our achievements, it is in their best interests to do that.
But we must not be fooled.
Our focus must not be diverted.
We are good at stabbing and killing each other, that is what Mr Cross and friends believe and they will encourage us to do just that.
The poor man pines for an era we dislodged at a huge cost.
He talks of a country that had the best everything.
What temerity.
It had the best everything for Rhodies and not the owners of the country.
Mr Cross is making an appeal to the majority, who were brutalised and oppressed, to restore an order that was ruthless and merciless to them.
Vanhu vatema vainge vasina mufaro muRhodesia vaCross.
Rhodesia hatiide, yainge yakaipa.
Our leaders must not stop talking about the liberation struggle.
All our aspirations, our ambitions and goals are steeped in that liberation struggle.
The struggle remains the reminder and the light guiding us.
Why do Americans or the British continue to dress up and erect gigantic monuments to celebrate battles fought hundreds of years ago?
Plaques dotted all over their countries tell the stories of their heroes.
Mr Cross let us be with our liberation struggle.