Revolution in the sticks

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

THIS Saturday’s column, as headlined above, should finally persuade unmitigated imperialist stooges cum doubting Thomases that the incumbent revolutionary Zanu-PF administration is indeed a government of the masses, by the masses and for the masses. This is demonstrated by the new measures being introduced to update the land reform programme in rural areas — home to the majority of our people, yet areas once dismissed by white racist Rhodesian rulers as the “sticks”, a term meant to suggest that blacks were no different from animals in the bush.

In the agricultural rejuvenation recently announced by the Government through its Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Professor Obert Jiri, each of the more than 35 000 villages across the country will be equipped with at least one small tractor.

This forms part of the drive to accelerate rural industrialisation, bolster food security and modernise agriculture — the cornerstone of survival for the majority in our beloved motherland.

With expert agricultural supervision, the equipment provided should help unlock and exploit idle agricultural capacity, delivering maximum results not only for local food security but also for export. This will help reverse reliance on food imports, which in the past have drained foreign currency that ought to have been used for the benefit of locals.

The new Government initiative aligns with National Development Strategy 2, which is anchored on establishing Village Business Units (VBUs) across more than 35 000 villages. This transformative approach shifts traditional subsistence farming towards productive, market oriented rural enterprises.

In this humble communicologist’s view, colleges throughout the country should introduce agricultural courses to equip school leavers with the skills needed to make Village Business Units the resounding success they are meant to be. Agricultural demonstrators should be deployed to ensure that projects meet their intended objectives.

Under the new model, each village agricultural hub will be supported through a VBU: a community owned rural industrialisation package comprising a solar-powered borehole, water storage tanks with communal taps, a fenced one hectare drip irrigated horticulture garden, fishponds for aquaculture, basic livestock watering and feeding infrastructure, and modern production technologies, including irrigation equipment.

If managed with the appropriate expertise to achieve the desired outcomes, this rural modernisation initiative will help stem the current urban drift. At present, school leavers often find no opportunities at home and trek to the cities before eventually moving to the diaspora, where many endure virtual slave-like conditions.

However, ancillary measures must be taken to ensure the success of the rural modernisation programme. These include ensuring that veld fires exist only in name, with no one resorting to hunting with fire, and modifying factory and coal mine chimneys to curb the release of carbon gases into the atmosphere. Such gases contribute to the corrosion of the ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful sun rays — rays that have contributed to successive droughts in recent years, devastating crops, drying up or reducing dam levels, causing shortages of vital water supplies in urban centres, and draining rivers and wells in rural areas.

Today, villagers — especially women — must be dancing and ululating, while their menfolk stride about with a justified swagger in celebration of the Government’s rural mechanisation programme.