Zimpapers Logo

Today is the 42nd anniversary of independence, won after a long, hard and bloody struggle, but for the majority of the population it is a time to look at what we have and to look at the future and see what we still have to do.

In the very early celebrations of independence a lot was made of the “born free”, small children born after independence. 

Well they are now an easy majority of the population, people who cannot have any direct memories of colonial days, although they obviously grew up with some of the ill-effects of those days. 

Demographic estimates vary quite widely, based on decade-old census data, and we will not have up-to-date statistics until round about the middle of this year when the results of the census being taken on Thursday night are collated. 

But round about three quarters of Zimbabweans, perhaps a bit more. are now “born free”, and pushing half were born after the land reform at the beginning of this century, at the end of the second decade of independence.

So for all our children and now a majority of adults, independence is an accomplished fact that happened before they were born, and even land reform, for all children and a modest but growing group of adults, is an historical fact, not something they lived through even as a toddler.

The importance of these sort of statistics is that we cannot rest on our laurels, something that the Second Republic has embraced with vigour as it pushes strongly to build a much better Zimbabwe. 

While we need to look at, and most importantly remember, what led to independence and how many suffered and how they suffered to achieve it, we also have to look at what we have done with that independence and, even more importantly, what we are doing to fulfil the dreams of independence.

And to a very large extent the post-independence generations have to play a major role in building Zimbabwe, mostly as with all of us in doing what they do to improve their own lives and the lives of their families, but all those individual and family bits adding up to the nation. 

The nation is not some abstract entity: it is all of us and what each of us do, and how we do it, added together.

If we all do our part, in other words be active in living decent lives and pushing forward with our individual lives and accomplishments, we will automatically create a decent and more prosperous country.

If we sit back and expect someone else to do the work, we will not.

President Mnangagwa understands this fully and a lot better than most, as he straddles the generations in pre-independence remarks over the weekend. Yes, as a very young man he was among the first to go and fight; yes he was in jail having just escaped a death sentence; yes he was in exile; yes he was a relatively junior Cabinet minister in the first independence Government.

But this is something that is there, in his biography, not something he uses to justify his leadership.

What he continually emphasises, and stresses, is the need for us all to push forward together rather than live in the past or expect someone else to parachute in, and probably take away our independence as they do it.

We have to do it ourselves, all of us.

We have the Vision 2030 and the National Development Strategy in phases to move us towards that Vision 2030.

Under the Second Republic, the Government knows what it needs to do, and mostly this in enabling. 

The President chose a team, and backed that team, to fix the national finances and then to use the resources released by that fixing to fund that Governments have to do.

So we have the roads being built and repaired; we have the power stations being built; we have the dams being built; we have the Bulawayo pipeline being laid; we have the education system created at independence in one of the greatest achievements of that first decade now being upgraded and redirected so that it equips the new generations to push forward.

The health services are now being upgraded continuously, with the Covid-19 pandemic seen as an opportunity and with the new problem-solving attitude the way to overcome this was to have much better health delivery and mobilise people to act properly and put together all those modest improvements by so many into a comprehensive whole.

Land reform is no longer seen as something once and for all, but more importantly as a way of giving Zimbabwean farmers access back to the more fertile land with far fairer distribution and then backing them with the training, research, inputs and marketing.

And, if necessary, to cut back on farms that are not being properly used to open more opportunities for those who will engage in the backbreaking labour of earning a decent living from the soil.

But all of this is simply to give people the tools they need to build Zimbabwe. Roads have to be used; farmers have to use the water in the dams; Bulawayo industrialists have to use the new water supplies to grow their businesses; young people coming out of schools, colleges and universities have to use their new skills; farmers have to learn the fruits of research, use the inputs and grow the crops.

The President has stressed the need for rapid industrialisation.

There are some State-owned bits, a modest minority with some new bits coming through the university and college innovation hubs and all now expected to show profits and pay dividends that can be used to fun more development. But much of the industrialisation will come from Zimbabweans and others building factories; the Government will ensure there is enough power and water, workforces that can be trained and roads to move materials in and goods out.

But Zimbabweans have to do the work and the building.

During the worst of the Covid-19, President Mnangagwa brought up what is the major lesson from independence.

If Zimbabweans could win their freedom despite some very determined efforts to deny them that, then why are we waiting and complaining.

This is why he stresses unity of purpose and the shared vision of a prosperous Zimbabwe with no area and no person left behind.

With independence we now have the tools to resolve our conflicts without violence. We have the vote, the big thing that people fought for, so our councils and our Parliament and our Government work for us not for others. 

We have the courts, so we can argue in front of a judge rather than hit someone.

We are human so there will always be differences, but independence gave us the right to fix these properly.

Unity does not mean some monolithic structure, but rather everyone pushing in roughly the same direction, and again usually because we want a better life for ourselves, our families and our communities and all those efforts adding up to the nation.

GDP is simply a measure, not something with a real existence.

It is the addition of millions bits added together and we have to each one of us create our bit.

That is how independence was won and that is how it can be turned into the future we all want.