Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
FOR oppressed blacks in this country and others under different forms of subjugation elsewhere in this world, the AK-47 stood out as a powerful liberation tool so that, had our gallant sons and daughters of the soil sat or slept on that empowerment tool, the independence and freedom that we enjoy today would probably not have become a reversed bromide of our colonial oppression, or would have remained a pipe dream ad infinitum.
In the circumstances, land reform which came hot on the heels of independence in 1980, and new arrivals in the form of community radio stations have reared up for inclusion in this discourse as derivative utilitarian empowerment tools of the armed revolution that brought uhuru to our motherland and should catalyse other,
Government programmes meant to make independence a reality rather than a receding mirage as in the case of some countries continually haunted by conflicts as if by ghosts.
Land reform was principally and still is meant today, to reunite our people with a motherland much of which, on account of its fertility, was usurped by those without knees to leave most of our people, the legitimate owners of this land, scratching peripheries of fertile land grabbed by the foreigners who might have, driven by uncontrolled whims, used the fertile land they grabbed to grow exotic grass for export as stock feed while our people eked out meagre existence on sandy or other sterile soils in the absence of better alternatives.
It therefore made great sense for our Government to carry out land audits, which must continue to ensure that those of our people who benefited from farmland repossessed by our Government from white farmers fulfil their empowerment by producing food for our nation and for export.
With young people being urged to play an important role in agriculture no farms reallocated to our people under the land reform programme should lie fallow while the country needs food and jobs for rural dwellers, what with devolution a key empowerment of rural folk previously neglected by racist white rulers who thumbed their noses at the countryside as “the periphery”.
What the above suggests, therefore, as already stated is that land audits must continue as a way of supervising the empowerment of our people to use that asset for the benefit of our nation rather than for speculative or other selfish purposes.
Should that happen, indeed as it MUST, nothing will stand in the way of the Government’s Vision 2030 under which, with agriculture raking in much-needed foreign currency through exports, our people will enjoy an upper middle-income economy.
We then have community radio stations as the latest arrivals on the empowerment scene with the Government threatening action against those communities squatting or sleeping on licences issued to them to use information as vital tools for development, an important role that communication plays in every society.
No doubt there are patriotic Zimbabweans raring to run with community radio stations in empowering fellow citizens by disseminating information on Government projects to emancipate people in their communities especially now with devolution the in thing.
Dysfunctional uses of community radio licences, such as the promotion of tribalism or political opposition should persuade the Government to withdraw licences from any communities prone to dividing rather than uniting Zimbabweans as one on a political, economic and social march into a brave new future.
Which suggests that any, and all, empowerment tools bequeathed to our people by the armed revolution should be made, and seen to catalyse our independence and freedom.
That way, future Zimbabwean generations will remain smack on the path charted by those who sacrificed their precious lives for the freedom and independence of our motherland.
Online Reporter