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THE election season officially ended yesterday with the swearing in of President Mugabe for his seventh team at the helm of this great nation.The scale of the mandate that the President and Zanu-PF received from millions of Zimbabweans was mirrored by the crowds that thronged the 60 000-seat National Sports Stadium yesterday evoking memories of the President’s inaugural swearing in on independence eve in 1980 when thousands of jubilant Zimbabweans thronged Rufaro Stadium to witness the birth of Zimbabwe.

That ceremony which was a culmination of the people’s victory against the Smith Regime after a 14-year war of attrition that built on earlier struggles by the heroes and heroines of the First Chimurenga/Umvukela of 1896/7 in a way mirrors yesterday’s ceremony that also came on the back of a 13-year western war on our economy that reached a crescendo with the decimation of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2008 and the near betrayal of the revolution in harmonised elections that year.

It is, however, pleasing to note that the majority of Zimbabweans have since re-dedicated themselves to the ideals of the struggle and rejected the MDCs and their yesteryear politics of western appeasement which were similarly rejected when they were fronted by Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole in the inaugural elections in March 1980.

As such President Mugabe begins his new term, the same way he began his inaugural one in 1980, revelling in victory after delivering a body blow to western settler subversion.

In 1980 he did so on the back of delivering political independence, this year he does so on the back of moving that independence from the political to the economic dimension.

And in his inauguration speech yesterday he clearly outlined the milestones to the Promised Land.
Let us all march in step with him and the team he shall pick to drive the agenda.

This bids all progressive Zimbabweans to put the shoulder to the wheel to ensure this vision reaches fruition.
It is clear Westerners will not remove their ruinous sanctions not least because they believe the sanctions serve any purpose but for the simple reason that it is the first time they have been beaten hands down in the developing world, and simply do not want to throw-in the towel.

As such we should now completely floor them by building alliances with like-minded countries.
Unlike the Smith regime, however, that worked with Portugal under the Marcel Caetano regime, Iran under the askari Shah Reza Pahlavi and apartheid South Africa, we are fortunate in having the rest of the progressive world outside the evil Anglo-Saxon alliance of the US, Britain and its dominions Australia and Canada on our side.

It’s time to show the Westerners that the sun has set in the west, and has risen in the east.
They can keep their sanctions, but let’s sanction them out of our economy which they were only able to sabotage by virtue of holding its levers.

With Zanu-PF’s pledge to put full control of the economy in indigenous hands, we have nothing to lose but our chains.
We wish you well Cde President, the desert is behind us, Canaan beckons.