THE progress that we continue to make amidst the challenges we presently grapple with must serve as a reminder that nothing is impossible.
Our brethren in the agricultural sector, specifically the tobacco sub-sector, are showing us that our aspirations and ambitions can be achieved.
Despite the myriad challenges that face our producers in the various sectors of the economy, tobacco farmers continue to record growth.
Every year, deliveries are satisfactory.
Reports from tobacco authorities indicate that this season’s target has again been exceeded.
As a country, in the last decade-plus, we have been through rough patches.
Ours is a nation that many in the West would want to see collapse so they can have their way and call the shots in how we manage our affairs.
It was said the new farmers were not in a position to produce crops that were formerly a preserve of the white minority.
Crops such as tobacco were only for whites and blacks had no business venturing into tobacco production.
But the nation has relentlessly pursued its policies and they are bearing fruit evidenced by the increasing tobacco deliveries.
Farmers are earning thousands of dollars from tobacco.
And we now have indigenes who are into tobacco seedlings production, earning revenues amounting to more than a million dollars.
Without doubt our farmers have, in the many seasons of tobacco production, become excellent producers that even beginners routinely have a good crop as they take a leaf from counterparts who have been in the game for some time.
Our tobacco farmers have in recent years done a great job bursting illusions and delusions foisted on us throughout our years of colonial bondage and by the so-called global village.
We were conditioned to think and see the whites as the alpha and omega of the agricultural sector, especially of ‘special’ crops; blacks were only good at maize and groundnuts production and nothing else.
But present output and quality of tobacco, under difficult conditions, from the ‘new’ farmers attest to the fact that we are equally capable, if not better producers.
In tobacco production we have effectively taken up our own discourse and we are shaping our national agenda and telling the rest of the world our own story from our own perspective.
The work by our tobacco farmers is a clear message, a message of our capabilities and what hard work and determination can achieve.
The effort by our tobacco producers is evidence that a bold initiative coming from a deep desire to succeed cannot be stopped and will not fail to yield a positive result.
Again I use this success to point to the fact that nothing is impossible, a huge task lies ahead of us, to make our economy fully functional, but let us not be frightened and intimidated by its size.
Tobacco producers have shown us the way.
We stormed successfully a sector that was said to require massive skills, but today Mbuya vaChenai is ably and efficiently producing the golden leaf.
We will not tire of this beautiful story; we will continue to celebrate our successful farmers.
The time is not coming when we will say the message is an old tale, for it never will, it must not.