THIRTY-six years on, we remain strong and resolute.
As we celebrate our independence, we must take pride in that we have remained true to our identity and aspirations.
And we have suffered for it.
But we have not sold-out and have not given up, even when the pain has been excruciating.
Our forefathers and foremothers must be proud we did not let them down.
The pressure, the onslaught and the attacks on us, from the West, has been relentless.
But the efforts to break our back have been futile.
Celebrating Independence Day is celebrating being Zimbabwean.
And we celebrate our independence every day.
The battles we have fought in the last decade protecting our interests and sovereignty have rekindled the Zimbabwean fighting spirit that saw us take up the baton from the First Chimurenga and saw us prevail in the Second Chimurenga as well as the Third Chimurenga that saw us repossess our stolen land.
We have successfully built a Zimbabwean ethos anchored in hard work and resilience.
We have remained ourselves in the family of nations without apologising for who we are.
Let us not lose our bearings, but continue to maintain our sense of purpose and patriotism in our nation, especially among the young people.
We have made great strides in efforts to own our resources.
We might be struggling now, but indigenes are in control of the resources.
A majority of miners, small-scale they might be, are indigenes.
Gold output is on the increase and majority producers are sons and daughters of the soil.
Already we have begun the process of indigenising our education system through revisiting our curriculum so that we truly become masters of our own destiny.
Colonial and post-colonial education alienated us from our culture, economy and heritage.
The curriculum was designed in a way that continued to serve interests of colonial masters and all discourses placed the West as that centre, intellectually, culturally, socially, politically or economically.
It is a system designed in a manner that made our children, scholars and everyone see development only happening inside the Western framework.
A majority of us now know the whiteman for who he is, under the steward of the current leadership of the country we have liberated ourselves from mental slavery, just as Bob Marley implored during our independence celebrations in 1980.
We must continue on that path of re-thinking and re-writing our curriculum in our own terms so that it fully benefits us.
We must continue to indigenise our intellectual resources fast, just like we seized our natural resources.
Our development and empowerment can never be complete if we fail to indigenise our intellectual space.
It is no secret that books about the exploits and heroics of the West have been fed to us while our values, traditions and beliefs have been painted as diabolic and retrogressive.
The objective of Western education and ideologies imposed on us was not designed to make us a great people but to perpetually make us feel inferior and less human, ashamed of our history as a people.
As we celebrate 36 years of independence, let the song of indigenisation, education and empowerment continue to ring loud in our ears.
The song must not die, but continue to echo in our ears for eternity.
It must guide future generations.
Just as we took the initiative from the 1890s right up to 1980, let us continue on the trajectory that will make us the light of Africa.
In the same spirit that we fought for our independence, let us fight for total economic emancipation.
Those who wish to support us are most welcome, but to our detractors, we say ask the Rhodies, they believed for 1 000 years they would be doing what they wanted with us; they were very wrong.
Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.