WE, in the village, value our land more than anything.

When one becomes an adult, one is given a piece of land where he/she should start in life.

The land question is always with us. 

What have you built on your land; what crops are you growing on your land?

The land has always been, and remains at, the core of our country’s politico-socio-economic development.

Sadly, when one looks at the education curricula across the board, it is hardly accorded the status it deserves.

It is time we change.

There is hardly any subject that prioritises land as the focal means of livelihood.

It appears the people’s relationship with their land is accidental and, therefore, something not to prioritise.

But I assure you, we are the envy of many across the globe — Zimbabweans, indigenes, own prime land.

If our curricula do not embrace the land question, then it is serving nobody except those who cherish our alienation from the land.

To appreciate and value our land, we must pass on the history of land dispossession to our youth.

Now, as in the past, land remains the root of the political tension within the country and with the former colonial power, Britain, and its fellow white allies.

It is crucial that our children understand why these white people are the only ones who have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe as punishment for repossessing their land.

They need to understand why the dark-skinned people of the world have not imposed sanctions on us; why the rest of the suffering are with us.

And this includes well-meaning developed countries, such as China and the Asian tigers, we deal with on equal terms.

Our erstwhile oppressors tasted the sweetness of our land, hence the sanctions.

Our education system must teach the critical value of our land to our children in the face of such adversity.

It must be made clear that the advent of European settler-occupation of Zimbabwe in September 1890 marked the dispossession of blacks of their land.

The 1893 invasion of the Ndebele Kingdom leading to the creation of the Gwaai and Shangani reserves: the 1896-97 Shona and Ndebele First Chimurenga/Umvukela; the nationalist struggle in the period before and after the Second World War; the Second Chimurenga which gave birth to independent Zimbabwe in 1980; the contentious Lancaster House Constitutional negotiations and the Agreement in 1979 and the current internal political developments, all bear testimony to the centrality of the land issue in the country’s history.

This, our children must know.

The expansion of the education system today must include a deliberate qualitative re-organisation of the curriculum.

It should focus mainly on the expansion of issues such as the land question.

More should be done to align our country’s education system  with the needs of the country.

Our aggressors hold their land in high esteem.

They do not allow anyone to temper with an inch even though they want to seize acres of ours.

As we close the year and return to our various pieces of land, let us reconnect with this precious commodity.

Our land is who we are.

Our ancestors had a deep connection with the land and they thrived.

Our allocations of land are no mere pieces of earth.

We derive meaning and significance from them.

During this break, as the year ends, let us begin not just to tell but teach our children the story of their land and its value.

Land reclamation was not an exercise of revenge.

It was not payback, it was a restoration of justice and not in the eye-for-an-eye sense but reclaiming what rightfully belonged to us.

Land is central not just to our existence but sustainable growth.

It is high time our educational institutions teach land as heritage because that is exactly what it is – heritage!