EDITOR — ANYONE who owns land is not, and can never be, poor but is rich beyond measure. We are very grateful to His Excellency for availing 10-ha plots to youths in Matabeleland South. Land is a tangible investment and an asset that keeps increasing in value over time. Land ownership provides the owner with financial security and contentment.
Land, everywhere in the world, is in high demand, is bought for thousands of dollars and, in our motherland, it is being availed to youths at no cost. We have been given an opportunity to become millionaires.
With a precise plan and clear objectives, land can generate and sustain livelihoods for generations. And we are blessed in that land is not just being given to us and it ends there; Government has in place many agricultural programmes and support facilities to ensure that our land becomes highly productive.
Through land, our youths are becoming their own bosses, living off the land. The most basic African grievance over land was that the white settlers, by dispossessing Africans of their land, had set up a society and property ownership system where white parents could count on leaving a substantial inheritance to their children and grandchildren while the African parent became a sheer burden for his or her children to support in old age.
Land is the foundation of all other means of production and sustenance, and those who control its ownership and use control and direct society and its values.
Through the Agriculture and Food Systems Strategy, Government had targeted a US$8,2 billion agricultural industry by 2025 but the target was reached in just one year in 2021. Statistics from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development indicate that the industry grew by a staggering 36,2 percent to US$8,19 billion in 2021 and continues to grow. And now youths are being put at the centre of this beautiful agriculture story — they are not being left behind.
On January 7 2022, President Mnangagwa launched the Provincial Integrated Youths Skills Development Centres (PIYSDC) which sought to enrol more than 5 000 youths from across the country to equip them with agricultural skills.
More than 700 heifers have since been distributed to youths across the country under the Presidential Heifer-Pass on Scheme. What more do we need to succeed — how can we not be grateful, Vakomana nevasikana, what more do we need from our leader who is doing everything humanly possible to prop us up. Let us do our President proud! — Sipho Gumede,
