By Tawanda Chenana

WE, in the village continue to run around working the fields, and most importantly, preparing our homesteads for visitors we expect during the festive season.

We know our children, our people, sons and daughters in the cities and abroad love to come home during the festive season.

It is time Joromio, who has been abroad for the last five years, is bringing home for the first time his wife and kids.

We look forward to hosting them.

We are inundated with questions by cousins, nephews, aunts and uncles if the wife and kids can speak Shona, if they eat sadza.

Everyone back in the village really looks forward to these visits which underline just how important the village is.

It doesn’t matter who you are, the Western cities and international hotels you have travelled and stayed at, home, the village, remains the place to be, that one place which cannot be replaced.

It is thus we most welcome the call by President Emmerson Mnangagwa for peace and tolerance as we prepare for the 2023 harmonised elections.

We do not want resources brought by our hard working children to end up being used to pay reparations.

Most of the violence perpetrated in towns and cities around the country end up being resolved here in the village.

We are Africans, black people. 

A murder or a maiming has to be resolved by reparations.

Let us heed the President’s call for constructive criticism and divergent views that promote national development.

Every sane and progressive Zimbabwean does not want violence and knows for a fact that attempts to foment politically motivated violence are firmly rooted in the old-age agenda of Cecil John Rhodes and Ian Douglas Smith of halting black people’s march towards total control of their land and natural resources. 

Rhodes and Smith never hesitated to perpetrate violence on innocent Zimbabweans in their rabid bid to control the means of production. 

We will borrow heavily from William Beinart’s May 9 2022 paper titled, ‘Racial Segregation in the Cecil Rhodes Cape Colony and Violence in Zimbabwe’. 

In a speech given in Bulawayo in early June 1896, Rhodes said: “Now we shall have to hunt them in the bush, and in the stones, and in the kopjes …Their food supplies will fail, and their courage will disappear… this country will be the abode of a white race.” 

In a military intelligence report from February 1897, when rock shelters were being blown up and villages destroyed in the Mashonaland area, Rhodes approved stating: “It seems to me that the only way of doing anything at all with these natives is to starve them, destroy their lands and kill all that can be killed.” 

Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe liyakhwa ngabanikazi is a philosophy that should drive every sector of politics included.

Gone are the days when political campaigns would turn nasty, all in the name of politics. 

We should not give an inch to anyone planning to unleash mayhem in the country.

Our tobacco and wheat farmers are doing exceptionally well and so are players in horticulture.

These producers are transforming livelihoods and communities as well as  contributing to the fiscus.

Small-scale miners are doing wonders with their claims. 

These too are uplifting communities.

And we should keep in mind that their success has been dependent on a peaceful environment.

Those in manufacturing have kept this economy going and so have those in the informal sector.

We do not need violence.

The motive for those fomenting violence is clear; they want regime change so that in place will be leadership that serves their interests at the expense of the people.

We know that it is people who want to negate the ideals and values of the liberation struggle and render useless the empowerment initiatives that the Government has put in place.

We have channels where concerned citizens can air their grievances and platforms for dialogue and engagement.

It is engagement which solves problems not violence and destruction of property. 

We must hold peace and tranquility as sacred values of our hunhu/ubuntu.

For development to benefit everyone we must respect property and other people’s freedoms.

We should unite as a country against our common enemy and together we will make it, leaving no place and no one behind.

Peace is the basis for development for many reasons. 

It brings stability and security.

In a peaceful environment, resources are harnessed for the greater good of the masses.

Conflict, on the other hand negates the good things that come with peace affecting every facet of development.

The world has, in recent years, witnessed conflicts that have destroyed millions of innocent lives and economies.

Most of these conflicts have been supported by superpowers and radical groupings.

Libya still rings loud in our ears. 

A fully developed country suddenly reduced to rabbles by a gluttonous West.

The damage that was inflicted on that country will not be repaired in our lifetime and the people of Libya now lament what was and should have been.

This is a sobering lesson. 

Let us not be hoodwinked into destroying our country for the benefit of the West.

We should always know where we have come from and where we are going.

Our history is not a narrative to be dismissed as a certain political party’s rhetoric. 

It is the country’s story.

Zimbabwe is our country, we have no other.

This is why we need an education that speaks to our aspirations.

We need an education that promotes our ideas.

We need an education that makes us cherish our country.

To love it and work for it.

We need an education that unites us.

We face many challenges today as a country and we must conquer them as a country as well.