Online Reporter
Dr Obert Moses Mpofu
ZIMBABWE’S past and future are both written in blood. Zimbabwe’s story is one written in blood. So much blood was spilled in the quest to free our beloved nation. This is a reality of our past that we can never change.
As Zimbabweans, we are bound by the blood of our slain and fallen comrades. It is their blood that watered the tree of our independence that has borne us the fruits that we enjoy today. Comrades who have walked this path since the 1960s till this day, where we now enjoy a free Zimbabwe, are forever bonded by blood.
There shall come a time when all of us will have to be answerable to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. They will ask us if we did what was required of us. They will expect that their sacrifice in blood did not go to waste and that the gift of freedom they gave us was not in vain.
The fight for our independence left a trail of destruction in both human and property terms. There are families who may never recover for generations because of the impact that the enemy had on them. We have comrades who went missing and have not been found to this day. Their sacrifices should never be in vain; we should always remember and make it a point to emphasise the sacrifices made in the war against minority rule.
There are perhaps some serious questions that we may need to answer as a nation; rather, there are serious responses we need to give. Part of it centres on whether we have done enough for the fallen hero. If we think we have, more can be done. After all, their sacrifices are still valid to this day.
Their sacrifice is a gift that keeps on giving, and we are always required to reciprocate this priceless act that led to the birth of our nation.
What were stories for the generations that were born post-independence were lived realities for the whole lot of us.
We lived under a cloud of uncertainty, and we had no idea which day would be our last. With each passing day, we would lose some of our dear comrades, and so many were lost. Chimoio and Mkushi and many other camps scattered across Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania are all but reminders of the gruelling and brutal nature of the colonial regime.
The journey was indeed a difficult one, and at least we have managed to stay true to the intentions of the liberation struggle. Struggle should never be for naught, one should be able to attain something from all their toil.
The best that our people can earn, particularly those who survived the protracted war of independence and are now war veterans, is to at least give them ownership of the land. After all, the war was fought to reclaim our birth right, which is this land that our ancestors had been forced out of by the colonisers who came in and wilfully parcelled out our land.
Our people are still recovering from how they were driven off their fertile lands to barren fields, leaving the invaders to parcel out swathes of our best lands and gold fields among their kin. Such an act was meant to not only dispossess our people but also exterminate them as a consequence, for we had been robbed of our means of production and had no livelihoods left in our name.
Very few people have a complete understanding of how the war of independence was essentially a war of survival. Without our farmlands, how were we expected to earn a living? There can be no doubt that the overall goal of the colonisers was to slowly wipe us out and take for themselves all our land.
The title deeds programme recently launched by President Mnangagwa is one of the ways through which the scale is being balanced. The black man will now have unquestionable possession of the land, which so many perished to acquire. The land question is, at best, settled with this master stroke and ingenuity. After all, it was fully paid for by those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Our land came at a heavy price. It came at the price of the blood of our kith and kin, and we should never take that for granted.
Going forward, we are now certain that the land ownership issue is one conversation we do not need to have anymore, for it is now settled. Whatever debt we had on our land was paid for in full by the sacrifice of our sons and daughters of the soil. There can be no doubt.
Dr Obert Moses Mpofu is an academic and the Secretary-General of Zanu-PF. He writes in his own capacity.
Bongani Ndlovu