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Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa

Chairman of War Veterans Association

By the design of nature, a human being has only one life to live and then it departs to eternity. Therein lies the supremacy of life as the most cherished attribute.

And the highest form of human virtue is to forego the quest for the personal comforts and and forfeiting the starting of the family for heredity continuity.

Indeed, the purpose of earthly existence is to live long and achieve maximum comfort and prosperity for oneself and offspring. 

But there comes a time of sacrifices rendered for the most prized love called patriotism. 

Sacrifice was for a challenge posed by loss of sovereignty through military defeat in 1896.

Sacrifices meant building our own army ZDF through warfare by ZANLA-ZIPRA supported by the populace in a People’s War so we could defeat foreign occupiers.

It is this context that leads to a full appreciation of the Samora Machel-Soweto76 Uprising generation of the 1960-70s.

At the 1884 Berlin Conference, European imperial marauders accorded themselves the licence to partition and possess chunks of African real estate as their colonies of self-enrichment. 

The law of uneven socio-economic development had marginalised the Mother Continent of Humankind. Europe, starting with England, burst into the Industrial Revolution with all its attendant technological rewards. 

Most telling of the discrepancy was in the field of armaments. 

A spear-wielding African army with bows and arrows was no match for the recoil-operated machine gun invented by Hiram Stevens Maxim in ominous 1884. 

Coupled with the 1867 invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel, Europe was assured of absolute military superiority and the efficacy to conquer and occupy.

A private band of mercenaries sponsored by a rich capitalist like imperial Cecil John Rhodes could become absolute rulers. 

For millennia, Zimbabwe had created one of Africa’s strongest civilisations run by a centralised state. 

The 1890 Pioneer Column of Cecil Rhodes smashed it in a series of battles and skirmishes between 1893-97. 

For 60 years imperial, colonial and racial enterprise ran rooster on cowered African majorities. 

In the meantime, the law of uneven socio-economic development was also swinging towards Africa.

The first boon was the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution of Lenin. It broke ranks with the European gun cartel against other continents and races. China immediately benefited as it staved off Japanese imperial aggression.

The Second World War ended with imperial Europe weakened and exhausted. 

Africa soon saw its chance even against entrenched, well armed settler minority regimes that served as cat’s paws of imperial Europe. 

This ushered in a period of protracted national liberation armed struggles on the southern tip of Africa.

Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa were joined by Guinea Bissau in confronting the NATO supported and allied powers of Britain, Portugal in league with apartheid South Africa.

The phalanx of national liberation war guerrilla armies engaged in asymmetrical war lost no time in reversing the military equation. Maputo and Luanda were reclaimed in 1975 as imperial and fascist Portugal collapsed. 

Rhodesia succumbed under the decisive onslaught of ZANLA-ZIPRA  guerrilla armies of the Patriotic Front in 1980. 

Windhoek would follow in 1989. 

Jaded Apartheid South Africa caved in, in 1994.  The Second Republic of President Emmerson D Mnangagwa came in 2017.  It was born of a desire stave away moves to establish a monarchical dynasty out of the revolution. 

Under the banner, Zimbabwe is Open For Business, President EDM has embarked on a far-reaching economic overhaul. 

This is already addressing the fundamental issues central to the sustenance of a modern nation.

One is bestowing prosperity to the populace so as to fulfil the dreams and aspirations of those who sacrificed in the 1960-70s.

As they lie at National Heroes Acre and its Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in mass graves of genocidal massacres, mine shafts and unmarked graves scattered across the width and length of Zimbabwe, their spirits yearn for the actuality of national prosperity they fought and sacrificed for.

The First Republic missed that aspect and Zimbabwe’s economy was synonymous with stagnation, regression and even atrophy. 

President EDM has reversed all that was hobbling economic growth by his pro-business agenda. 

The current green shoots of economic revival point to revival of prosperity.

This time there is palpable joy displacing the dispiriting atrophy that was the hallmark of the last two decades of the First Republic and its overstayed geriatric ruler, his ambitious but empty-head spouse and a bevy of male G40 cohorts.

Granaries have been filled up, breaking a 20-year jinx of food shortages. Commercial farming is in full restoration as centre pivots dot the land for all season farming. 

Scientific Pfumvudza is revolutionising small-scale farming as tiny plots deliver outsized harvests. Solar pumps powered by photovoltaic panels feed into drip lines. 

One enterprising company, Drip Tech, is opening branches at nearly every junction. Cars park by as if it is a fast-food joint. Cartloads of much-needed farming equipment cruise to rural lands. 

Fruit, horticulture, nuts, ginger and other exports are on the rise. 

Agro-processing is back as local products displace imports in supermarket shelves. 

The global class mining sector is kicking in with windfall dividends from the ongoing global resource boom in platinum group minerals and others. 

Incentives are attracting the movers and shakers of global mining. Tsingshan Holdings Group is soon breaking ground for a major steel plant project in Mvuma-Chivhu-Manhize. Ten years of fortitude against G40s and their capital-rebuff Indegenisation has given a lead as they renew friendship with the pro-business President EDM. 

Selous has more ferrochrome furnaces. Hwange has ever expanding coke oven batteries. The capital-heavy mining sector will trigger a huge spending in the enabling infrastructure of water, electricity, logistics of ports, rail and road as well as telecommunications and internet. 

The President has since taken a firm grip of the national finance system as of June 2020. 

There was the  domestication of the national currency by banning or husbanding those who moonlighted as private central bankers whose activities fuelled debilitating inflation. 

Tobacco farmers and SME gold miners have never made it so good from their effort and sweat as they are paid and can keep their earnings knowing value is preserved.

Now the currency is relatively stable. It is rewarding honest hard workers as it  frees and gingers spirits of entrepreneurship. 

 Through the RBZ weekly auction, foreign exchange is efficiently directed to capacity growth away from conspicuous consumption and frivolous imports. 

Fuel queues are history in liberalised market. 

The new and unfettered  Victoria Falls Stock Exchange is already delivering funds resources from the deep wells of global capital markets. 

The economic prognosis is tantalisingly bright. Zimbabwe has never been so busy. 

The Diaspora Home Country Contentment Index keeps going up, their remittances driving a massive construction boom. Never in the history of modern Zimbabwe has so much cement been in demand and consumption.

President EDM propounded Vision 2030 and Middle Income Status for Zimbabwe. 

With diving inflation and rising GDP growth rates, the President has set the firm economic foundation of delivering long-yearned prosperity. 

Now and sure the heroes and sheroes of supreme national sacrifice are being atoned. The loss of lives and limb was not in vain. 

On defeat of enemy we have restored ability to rebuild our nation back to prosperity. 

A thriving Zimbabwe is the prize sought by the sacrifice. 

Let’s celebrate August 2021 Heroes Day with renewed hope and assured confidence.