WHEN President Emmerson Mnangagwa launched his election campaign at Mutema High School, Chipinge, on June 24, he did not need to explain to the electorate why he deserved another term in office.
His policies and developmental projects had already spread across the country, sending a reassuring memo to the masses that the country is, indeed, in safe hands.
The early signs were promising as President Mnangagwa embarked on an all-encompassing, people-oriented drive to bring development to every part of the country when he took office in 2017.
The results, whose picture we do not need to highlight anymore, are there for everyone to see.
His thunderous victory over the embattled CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, in reality, a crushing denunciation of the West’s vigorous pursuit for regime change in the country, was a definite statement that Zimbabweans are in tandem with the developmental agenda that he has embarked on over the last five years.
It wasa validation of his second term; a term that will be marked by even more infrastructural development.
Zimbabweans came in their numbers to the National Sports Stadium on Monday to confirm their collective endorsement of the man who has transformed the country in just five short years.
The ceremony, it should be borne in mind, was about and for the people of Zimbabwe as clearly engraved in the fresh term they have given him.
“I stand as President of all. I offer you, individually and collectively, unity,” he said in his inauguration speech to and for the people of Zimbabwe.
The West has tried, for more than two decades, to effect regime change through illegal means, employing an unprecedented economic warfare designed to bring the economy to its knees and turn the masses against the Party.
That has been a monumental failure.
And as expected, they took that recklessness a step further during the August 23 harmonised elections where they naively tried to interfere with the country’s electoral processes, laying siege on its Constitution and the electoral mother body, ZEC, using rowdy elements in SADC to tarnish those polls.
The result of that aggression which they shamelessly say is ‘democracy’ has produced an all too familiar outcome — a Zimbabwe that is once again standing tall and defying the odds.
What it, however, means is that the country will endure another five years of intensified hostility from the ‘aggrieved’ West who, as has become the norm, will be duly mad as haters.
Because this is Munhumutapa’s land!
“We make no apologies for entrenching and protecting our unique Zimbabwean values, cultures and norms. In this regard, I challenge us all to remain Zimbabwean and African in both thoughts and deeds,” said President Mnangagwa.
“Zimbabwe is a sovereign State and ‘friend to all and enemy of none’. Our membership and engagement within SADC, the African Union and United Nations and other countries in the comity of nations remain guided by the principles of mutual respect and the sovereign equality of nations, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
The undermining of our national institutions and laws will not be condoned, under whatever guise. No country or group of persons should disregard the sovereign decisions and views of the people of our motherland, Zimbabwe. We will never be second class citizens in our own country. We stand ready to welcome those countries who want to work with the new ZANU PF Government to build lasting partnerships to make the world a better place.”
As Zimbabweans got back to their business-as-usual, there is no denying the compelling fact that theirs has been a deserved leap of prosperity.
