Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu
It truly is a tragic irony that today our beloved motherland stands as a once-upon-a-time bread basket of Southern Africa with food exports to Zambia and as far north as Egypt soon after independence in 1980.
Credit for the food surplus production went to peasants sometimes working infertile strips of land while wounds inflicted on their hearts by racist white Rhodesians for the blacks’ yearning for independence, freedom and self-determination were still fresh.
Indeed, much more food surpluses might have burst village granaries and national silos when soon after independence the Government introduced land reform to reclaim vast tracks of rich land usurped by white settlers, but for the political opposition driven by avid power hunger inviting on bended knees Western imperialism, alias the python driven by a demonic spirit, to come and to crush and swallow the incumbent Zanu PF Government then and now so that they, the MDC, would get into power.
If truth be told our entire nation would have become a discarded python skin after imperialism with its vicious economic sanctions was done with us but, for the resilience demonstrated by Zanu PF Government anchored by an uninverted majority citizenry which has kept the country going in spite of a limping economy seriously wounded by the illegal economic embargo and with global warming spawning recurrent droughts that virtually incinerated food crops and pastures resulting in food shortages and livestock losses in many parts of Zimbabwe.
Shame on those Zimbabweans who invited the demonic-spirited python alias imperialism, attracted by its bright spots, but tragically ignorant about its bambazonke-zonke-muntu character which does not spare even those who court it.
Which means that any open apologies by sellouts who invited economic calamities to our country do not and will never atone for the suffering our people endure to this day.
However, there is a silver lining to the trials and tribulations mentioned above with that the Government preparing to open vast swathes of land along the Zambezi, Save and the Limpopo rivers for agricultural food production with the vast water resources in the rivers being harnessed drought or no drought in those parts of the country.
If run along the lines of Command Agriculture, different varieties of food crops will be produced for both local consumption and export to earn much needed forex for injection into various economic sectors such as industries, affected by economic sanctions, to revive them.
The driving power in the planned agricultural programs should be youths, both males and females who pound urban streets in search of jobs, or get involved in crime, or flock to other countries to try to make ends meet, rendering slave labour in some cases, should be harnessed to become driving forces behind agricultural projects to be undertaken.
To that end agricultural colleges and universities should become whetstones for sharpening young Zimbabweans into sagacious tools to shape a brave new future for all.
As things stand right now, it is not short of a laughingstock to the wider global village for a people boasting such high intelligence, which should translate into skills, to sometimes hold begging bowls to the outside world when it should instead grow sufficient food for local consumption and for sale abroad, manufacture buses, trucks, helicopters and even planes for export to demonstrate its high-calibre medulla-oblongata as justification for your nation’s intellectual swagger.
Online Reporter