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WHEN Zimbabweans work together for a common purpose we tend to win, and this includes when we disagree over methods so long as we sensibly debate our differences and put together the best ideas, regardless of where they come from, so that the common goals of a better country and a better life for all are achieved quicker.

However, this common purpose does need general agreement over the main goals and that requires a degree of honesty and integrity.

The main goals are obviously, regardless of political affiliations and ideologies, that of a better country, a more prosperous country, a functioning country, freedom for all of us to push our lives forward and have our say, and generally a better life for everyone.

We saw this in the long nationalist struggle culminating in the protracted liberation war of the 1970s. Ian Smith lost despite starting the war with most of the trump cards: he had the economy, he had the ruling class, he had the police, he had the army and the air force.

Basically he had everything except the support of the people, and that lack of popular support was what sunk him and his regime.

Yes, the high levels of discontent and opposition still needed to be organised into action, and a lot of young men and women needed to be willing to commit themselves to that action, to join the liberation armies fighting Smith, and the general population had to be willing to support them.

That happened and so the people won. But once it became clear that victory was possible, and then that victory was certain, the commitments were made and the support given.

This week we buried yet another leading fighter, Sikhulile Simpson Nyathi, a retired Major-General, but a man who in his late teens decided he should stop sitting back and go and fight.

His generation are now moving towards advanced middle and old age; the youngest veterans of the struggle, since the liberation forces did not use child soldiers. They are now in their 60s and we will be seeing increasing numbers joining those who died in battle so long ago.

But we must not forget, and as President Mnangagwa stressed at Major-Gen Nyathi’s burial, we need to ponder the lessons.

And, regrettably, one of the lessons is that there were people, and are people now, who care nothing for anyone except themselves and the short term gains they can make by diverting from the common purpose. Smith was able to buy some support after all although he had to spend ever more.

Far more recently we faced what could have been a disaster, Covid-19. We all tend to be a bit blasé about it now, that the threat continues to recede, but one of the reasons we can relax, and perhaps over-relax, is that we united to defeat it.

We had our deaths, almost 5 000, but our death rates were 10 percent of those seen in other countries, some far richer and more able to fight the threat, where there was no united effort.

Our biggest single struggle at the moment is economic. We need to grow our economy quickly, increase the national wealth sustainably and ensure that the gains we are making are reasonably well distributed.

This pushing forward together, without anyone being left behind, makes economic sense, as well as being a moral imperative.

To create an upper-middle income country we need everyone to be somewhere in the middle income bands. We do not need to be equal, but we cannot have a veneer of well-off people on a mass of those in poverty.

That in fact is what Smith’s country looked like and the racial selection of who was in the crust and who was in the mass just made it that much worse.

But this does mean that we need to push together. The Second Republic has fixed the fundamentals, so growth can be sustainable and viable. The national finances were sorted out, so the Government lives on what it can raise in taxes to provide all those essential services, from health and education through security to the infrastructure that is necessary.

The monetary policy was sorted out, with the last steps taken recently in setting a willing-buyer willing-seller exchange rate.

The reforms, along with a lot of hard work by a lot of Zimbabweans, also automatically made our balance of payments positive, that is we earn more foreign currency than we spend.

So this should have resulted in a stable economy, low inflation and everything just running smoothly. We have implemented the solutions. While it is easy to blame others for troubles, in this case there appears to be justification.

With all the basics sorted out it becomes apparent that speculation for short-term private gain is now the culprit.

Those who rely on enriching themselves by speculation are even creating conditions where speculation is profitable and messing up those who reckon they have some good ideas and want to become rich through honest hard work and producing.

We need producers and investors who have good ideas and want to become wealthy by implementing those ideas, hiring people and paying their taxes as they do so. This is in fact the engine of growth.

But those who want to do what some people are doing at the moment so they are rich, by cheating, need to be stopped.

High inflation is the traditional method of moving money from the poor, the many poor, to the small number of the rich, and there are too many in Zimbabwe, including a majority of our banks, who fancy this sort of reverse Robin Hood operation.

There is nothing wrong with being critical of Government policies, or pointing out shortcomings, of suggesting other ways of solving a problem, of wanting new openings to open productive businesses. This sort of debate is in fact necessary to accelerate the growth. But the stress must be on producing, not on massaging money.

Zimbabwe learned the hard way that there are no short-cuts to prosperity, just as there were no short-cuts to our freedom. It required a major effort by just about everyone to achieve freedom and it requires a major effort by just around everyone to achieve prosperity.

So when we look back on the achievements of those who fought, and won the liberation war, we should apply the lessons they learned to the new problems and the new needs.