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President Mugabe at the podium.

YESTERDAY hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans converged in Harare for a Million-Man March in solidarity with President Mugabe, the only leader in Africa today cut from the cloth that gave the continent legends like Ghana’s founding president Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Samora Moises Machel of Mozambique to name just a few.

This is the class of African liberation icons that chose to die on their feet than live on their knees like what some incumbent African leaders do today.

They were not afraid to stand up and challenge the Western-backed settler establishments that were oppressing their people.

This common vision saw 31 African leaders come together to launch the Organisation of African Unity on May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a brief to decolonise the continent, a process that was wrapped up with the advent of freedom in South Africa in 1994.

But that was just the beginning of yet another chapter of the African struggle, the struggle for economic independence that President Mugabe has ably led from the front.

Thus yesterday’s gathering was a celebration of our greatness as a people. A day to remember the heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives to make Africa what it is today.

The significance of the Million-Man March organised by the Zanu-PF Youth League can thus not be overemphasised. The march testified to the longevity of the Pan-African ideals that saw the continent’s leaders converge in Addis Ababa, 53 years ago to chat Africa’s destiny.

The march was a celebration of the consciousness of the Zimbabwean youth in particular and African youth in general who have all refused to embrace the Western narrative on Zimbabwe and Africa.

A narrative that sought to soil President Mugabe’s efforts to get Africa to move from the domain of political independence to holistic independence.

This focus and vision is the reason President Mugabe is lionised wherever he goes in the developing world, the recent inauguration of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and the Fort Hare centenary celebrations being cases in point where President Mugabe’s presence was welcomed by the loudest cheers and applause.

This congruence between President Mugabe’s vision and Africa’s aspirations is the reason why Zimbabwe is accused of posing a continuous and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States, a policy of plunder and subjugation that has seen Western rabble-rousers impose a ruinous, illegal sanctions regime on Zimbabwe since the turn of the millennium.

Yesterday’s march was thus not just a procession; it was a powerful statement on the success of the peoples’ revolution despite the West’s machinations to undo it and replace it with proxy regimes.

Yesterday was not just about expressing solidarity with President Mugabe; it was about reaffirming commitment to the ideals of the struggle, all of which he embodies in their entirety.

The Million-Man March was not just about expressing confidence in President Mugabe’s leadership and silencing errant voices within Zanu-PF, it was about defending the values of the revolution in which over 50 000 precious lives were lost at the hands of a racist settler regime, while tens of thousands of survivors were needlessly maimed by the uncouth Rhodesian army.

The march was not just a partisan procession by the Zanu-PF Youth League and indeed other wings of the revolutionary party, it was a national statement and was for everyone who believes in the Zimbabwean dream, that of a progressive, self-determining country free to chat its own destiny in unity.