By Tawanda Chenana

‘TRANSPORT operators and businesspeople hail roads rehabilitation’, ‘New era for Beitbridge’, ‘Rural poultry scheme targets three million households’, ‘Devolution transforms Matabeleland health sector’, ‘Weekly grain deliveries hit 20 000 tonnes’ are some of the headlines in our media that have many of us in the village really excited.

We, in the village, never take anything for granted or a lackadaisical approach to work or duty as doing so has disastrous consequences.

Tinorindira makudo to protect our maize fields. 

We wake up early in the morning and work till dusk in our gardens; we herd cattle, closely monitoring our flock of sheep and goats.

The key phrase in all the above activities is ‘close monitoring’.

If one blinks, the cattle can destroy fields and baboons can feast on the maizefields.

The crucial lesson we have learnt back in the village is to never take the eye off the ball.

And as we rebuild our economy, brick-by-brick, isu vene venyika, vavaki vayo, we must not lose focus.

Everything is unfolding as it should as evidenced by all the developments we are witnessing on a daily basis.

However, this should not lull us into a false sense of security because our enemies and detractors are not happy.

Ours are thriving fields and many are the baboons.

We know that there are those ever itching to attack the nation’s leadership over what they say are ‘failed’ policies and ludicrously suggest that Rhodesia was better than Zimbabwe.

There are those ever peddling falsehoods and unleashing personal attacks on the country’s leadership in a bid to create the impression that Zimbabwe can only progress if it is in the hands of whites.

It should be understood by every builder of this great nation that Rhodies, our former imperialists and their allies, remain bitter and have not given up on the dream of resuscitating the long dead Rhodesia.

What our enemies cannot fathom is how a country which has been under economic sanctions for more than two decades, where every business infrastructure was destroyed, continues to tick.

Ours is an economy that was hammered so bad that every citizen by now was expected to have risen against the Government.

But our Government has not been sleeping at the wheel and every patriotic citizen knows the cause of our problems.

We have not been fooled; we have seen the horror in Libya, we know better.

Every day we are strengthened by the various projects being completed.

It is development that is there for all to see.

And the masses are the beneficiaries; a majority of our businesses are indigenous-owned.

That economy, which was benefitting a few whites, which excluded blacks from having a ‘reasonable’ standard of living, is what we fought against.

That war of liberation, where sons and daughters of the soil perished, was waged to do away with whites’ policy of exclusion that manifested through expropriation and plunder of resources for the benefit of the white minority.

It is true that the black Government took over an economy that was able to sustain a ‘reasonable’ standard of living; but only for a few white people at the expense of the black majority.

And this is what our Government has been working to redress since 1980. 

This is why, today, we continue to be driven by the Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe liyakwa ngabanikazi philosophy.

We are all players in this economic revolution and should not pay attention to naysayers, nor should we put our guard down.

Pain and suffering has been the price tag to this economic revolution but better days are beckoning.

The losses, pains and anguish in the establishment of Zimbabwe built by its owners will come to an end sooner rather than later.

Soon we shall be harvesting the plumb fruits of this struggle for economic emancipation.

Already, many of our farmers (black), who previously did not own a single acre of land, bear testimony to the success of the ‘price of bad governance’ as our enemies call it.

Our detractors were comfortable with a situation where blacks owned the flag while they plundered our resources — but not anymore!

Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe liyakwa ngabanikazi.