HomeOld_PostsOur silos are not for leasing

Our silos are not for leasing

Published on

NO comrades, we do not surrender.
That is exactly what the Grain Marketing Board’s plan to lease out our silos, especially to outsiders means, surrendering.
Let us quash the notion that the leasing strategy will get us the much needed and desired revenue.
Let us come up with better strategies to attract the revenue we clamour for.
The idea to lease our silos is a show of people unwilling to think.
Examples have already been set for us by the country’s leadership.
Had our leaders chosen the easy way out, they would have mortgaged the country a long time ago.
They would have given away our vast resources in the name of harnessing revenue.
But they did not.
They persevered until this moment where we are talking about lucrative deals that do not just bring trinkets but real value that will benefit the whole country.
There are better strategies.
For instance, there are massive agricultural activities in Raffingora where the Zimbabwe National Army has gone into partnership with the Chinese.
These are the strategies that must be replicated so that we deliver the seven million metric tonnes of grain that fill our silos.
We have not failed to fill them.
We are just yet to fill them.
Thus inviting others to utilise the silos does nothing, but demoralise those of us eager to produce for the motherland.

This invitation of outsiders to come and fill up our silos is a foreign idea.
It cannot have generated from within, from a people that fully understand the Zimbabwean story.
That invitation reeks of many unpleasant things.
It is an invitation that implies we are failures, that we cannot do it.
The country has in the last decade followed an exciting history full of challenges that would have broken weaker people.
But we continue to stand and more than survive.
As the nation went through the land reform and resettlement programme, our detractors foretold of an impending spectacular demise.
Even when the demise has not happened and all evidence point to the contrary they still hope and believe that it will happen.
And that is the reason why we will not even for a second consider these strategies that do not take into cognisance the ill-wishes and desires of our detractors.
Our silos are closely related to our land, land that we own, land that we are working.
And that is why we have embarked on a land audit programme, to determine not what is but how much is being done on the land.
Indeed there are some that are not fully utilising the land.
And we will look at how that land can be made more productive.
We will not go to our neighbours and ask them to fill our silos.
We will not abdicate our obligations and responsibilities.
Ownership of land, production on that land, is a process of telling and writing our story.
It is a process of shaping our national agenda and not letting outsiders determine the shape our nation must take.
There are many, the Chinese included, ready to invest millions of dollars in the agricultural sector.
Already they are engaged in projects with partners that are not hampered by bureaucracy.
The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority has vast tracts of land presently underutilised and many are partners that want to work with the authority.
What I am saying is that let us not be fooled into thinking that filling up silos with a capacity of seven million metric tonnes is a mammoth task, it is not.
All it requires is hard work, commitment and action.
If stakeholders were to put half the effort that President Robert Mugabe puts every cropping season, by now the silos would be half-full.
The bold initiatives we are witnessing in the economic arena let us replicate in the agricultural sector.
All we need to revamp the agricultural sector is revise our way of doing business.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

The contentious issue of race

 By Nthungo YaAfrika AS much as Africans would want to have closure to many of...

More like this

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading