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President - a Man of the People
The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
7 December 2007
Posted to the web 7 December 2007
By Godwills Masimirembwa
Harare
The distinguishing characteristic of revolutionaries in the mould of President Mugabe is that they are not afraid of confrontation in pursuit of what they believe in.
Their strength and justification lies in history and the masses.
They seek to establish a just social, political and economic order where those submerged in oppression, backwardness, economic deprivation and other evils are transformed into free men and women with substantial economic capacity both as producers and consumers. This revolutionary characteristic resonates throughout President Mugabe's 20th State of the Nation Address. He is a man of the people.
The path of a revolution of necessity entails, among other things, freeing the poor and downtrodden from the shackles of poverty through industrialising a country and/or improving agriculture. Zimbabwe's economy is agro-based.
So, for us, agriculture is the key to economic development. Zimbabwe's industries are also primarily geared to support the agricultural base.
But we also have our minerals and tourism for good measure. President Mugabe's address aptly captures the mood of an expectant nation. He is a man of action. He speaks of a real objective economic order in Zimbabwe that everybody is longing for and understands. His deliverables are there for everyone to see.
He has not let us down. We owe it to him and to ourselves not to let him down. So, as Zimbabwe moves into 2008 and beyond, as we expectantly look forward to the ushering-in of, and the maturation of the "dawn of a new era of constructive engagement across the political divide" in Zimbabwe, we share with our President the vision of a politically stable and prosperous Zimbabwe.
We share with our President a vision of a world order that respects our sovereignty and independence and our right to our resources. We share with our President a vision of international relations that are based on the right of every nation to exist and to chart its destiny, while taking into account the rights of other nations and mutual obligations between and among nations.
We share with our President the vision of a world trading order that does not disadvantage underdeveloped and developing nations. The new dawn on the Zimbabwean horizon enjoins opposition political parties to rally behind President Mugabe in calling for the lifting of the illegal sanctions imposed against the country.
The EU-Africa Summit that begins tomorrow affords the opposition an ideal opportunity to tell the world that the illegal sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe are hurting ordinary Zimbabweans and are killing business in Zimbabwe. Opposition parties that called for the illegal sanctions have the moral responsibility to denounce them and call on the United States, Britain and the European Union to lift the illegal embargo.
This will represent a quantum leap from destructive to constructive engagement in finding solutions to Zimbabwe's economic problems. The new dawn on the Zimbabwean horizon enjoins transnational corporations to raise external finance for their Zimbabwean operations. They need to demonstrate that they are on Zimbabwe's side and partake of its development agenda by raising external finance and ensure that their companies are fully operational for the mutual benefit of Zimbabwe and their shareholders.
There is no doubt that all the domestic efforts, all the sacrifices that Zimbabweans are making to revive the economy, are not sufficient. It will take much longer to revive the economy on the basis of our sacrifices alone. In fact, the sacrifices by the Government and people of Zimbabwe under facilities such as the Basic Commodities Supply Side Intervention Facility (Bacossi) also benefit transnational corporations since they hold significant, and in certain cases, majority shareholding in companies that are being assisted under these facilities.
The prosperity of these companies means the transnational corporations' foreign shareholders benefit as dividends are declared and paid out. Black economic empowerment cannot be used as an excuse to avoid raising external finance. The path of the revolution has demonstrated that blacks were disadvantaged and that the Government would have failed in its responsibility to bring equity in the distribution of wealth if it did not introduce indigenisation laws.
The new dawn on the Zimbabwean horizon enjoins Zimbabwean entrepreneurs to redouble their efforts to increase production in order to stabilise prices. Empty supermarket shelves present an opportunity to fill them. That opportunity is available to every Zimbabwean with an entrepreneurial mind. But let us fill the shelves with as much of local production as possible, for the new dawn on our horizon means we create more jobs, export more products and thereby generate more foreign currency.
The statistics on equipment distributed under the agricultural mechanisation programme and the livestock rehabilitation programme proves beyond doubt that the Government is committed to improving agriculture and consequently the lives of the majority of Zimbabweans. The agricultural implements distributed across the breadth and length of the country must be used to the maximum. Our President has demonstrated that he does not want the majority of Zimbabweans to go barefoot, to lack food, to be miserably poor, to have no capacity to look after themselves, to be illiterate or to have a short life expectancy.
To the majority in the communal lands and the A2 farmers, the scotch carts, the ploughs, the triangular harrows, the knapsacks, the planters, the cultivators, the tractors, the disc harrows, boom sprayers, combine harvesters, vicons, fertilizer spreaders, hay balers, and, of course, the Zimbabwean never-die spirit, will propel them to a higher level in the fight against poverty and underdevelopment.
The path of the revolution has taken Zimbabwe to a new dawn on the horizon, the dawn of true prosperity based on the equitable ownership and control of our resources. But it is a new dawn of hard work and sacrifice. The President has warned us against the get-rich-quick mentality characterised by non-productive speculative activities. Indeed, the agricultural implements, the industry support programmes and other initiatives meant to revive the economy are premised on the total commitment of Zimbabweans to work hard and smart in order to transform their lives.
The Government has provided abundantly to agriculture and industry. Farmers at every level, industrialists and manufacturers are being called upon to reciprocate Government efforts by sowing generously so that the country may have an abundant harvest of agricultural produce and manufactured goods.The path of the revolution travelled so far has put to shame prophets of doom. Zimbabwe is still standing, is recovering from its post-independence lowest ebb and is on the road to full economic recovery.We must not forget that our lowest ebb as Zimbabweans was when we lost our land to British colonialists, for then our very source of livelihood was taken away from us.
The President is aware of the neo-colonial British agenda, but takes comfort, as all Zimbabweans do, in the "winds of change" sweeping across the once hostile Western world.Many countries in Europe have come to the realisation that Britain is suffering from an apparently incurable colonial master hangover and wants everyone to join it in its denial state.
This realisation has left Britain in the cold, harping about unsubstantiated human rights abuses.But the log in Britain's eye -- that of plundering Zimbabwe's resources for almost a century and imposing illegal sanctions on us -- remains firmly stuck in its eye, with the only way of removing it being returning the loot to Zimbabwe or assisting Zimbabwe to emerge from underdevelopment by lifting the illegal economic sanctions and calling on Europe and America to do the same.
As European and African leaders gather in Lisbon, the one inescapable disparity between the two continents arising out of the failure or refusal by the former to respect humanity's rights in the latter is there for everyone to see.Europe is rich because it plundered our wealth. Africa is underdeveloped because of over a century of exploitation by Europe.
Let the truth be told so that corrective action can be taken; or if it is not taken, humanity knows who is to blame for Africa's current underdevelopment.But Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular, is not a weeping boy. The President's address clearly demonstrates that Zimbabweans take full responsibility for their destiny.
The dawn of a new era beckoning on the horizon is as a result of Zimbabwe's political leadership's principled walk on the path of the continuing revolution that will address the current underdevelopment and bring about sustained economic development, peace and prosperity.
