Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
For many decades since shortly after independence in 1980 this country has soldiered on along its independence road under a ban through illegal economic sanctions by racist Western countries from accessing any funding from international institutions as punishment for introducing land reform to consolidate Uhuru.
However, Zimbabwe valiantly weathered the vicious weather directed at removing the Zanu-PF Government as punishment for repossessing land from some whites for re- distribution to the black farmers who needed that asset the most.
But by the grace of God, the locked door of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was flung open this week with US$961 million with the money doled out to a needy Zimbabwe to be channelled towards strategic economic focus areas according to Treasury.
If, indeed, the money is deployed accordingly and scrupulously policed it cannot fail to fillip breakthroughs in the country’s strategic agricultural, mining and manufacturing territories and in the process boost the overall economic growth hitherto constrained by the Western economic embargo.
Agriculture, in particular, has been the mainstay of economies on the African continent since time immemorial before those without knees set foot on African soil to build towns where they set up industries for themselves while others settled in the rural areas where they usurped fertile land with Africans literally squatting on infertile peripheries of the land where with hard work they produced enough food for their survival.
Today most Zimbabweans live in the countryside, previously pejoratively referred to by white rulers as the “periphery”.
But come to think of it, it was the peasants, and not white farmers on vast pieces of land who produced bumper food harvests at independence to make Zimbabwe the breadbasket of Southern Africa and with grain surpluses going to the North, through Zambia and to as far as Egypt.
The above is ample testimony that, given the necessary financial support for inputs, and the weather permitting, Zimbabwe has the capacity to use the money from the Bretton Woods Institution to feed the region and other needy African countries as well.
What is more, if the Government deploys more finances and technical expertise, students leaving school will stay home to produce agricultural food products for export to earn much-needed foreign exchange for the country instead of leaving the country for menial jobs such as putting tar on roads, for instance while also being exposed to criminal activities in some of the host countries.
With more skilled Zimbabweans at hand to grow our own economy, there will certainly be no need to lure back white Rhodesian farmers who stormed out of the country in protest at land reform and now live in Australia where no black servants wait on them, with some in South Africa where they joined racist Boers in the oppression of our fellow blacks there.
(Those groups of farmers yearn for the kind of heavenly life on earth that they enjoyed in this country and is nowhere to be found in their present host states.)
But while Zimbabweans may have forgiven those racists for their oppressive tendencies and forgotten the past, it would be foolhardy of anyone to say the same for the refugee whites who must be expected to vent their vengeance on the Zanu-PF government for “taking away our land and parcelling it out to their fellow blacks” or something to that effect.
To vent their anger, they might then work with imperialists in the West who maintain sanctions against this country to try to destabilise the country or join hands with opposition political parties and surrogates of Western imperialists in efforts to oust Zanu-PF power.
If those tactics nosedive the angry and desperate farmers might then deploy colonial Rhodesian racial echoes or/and even grand-parent their kith and kin offsprings in ways that regard blacks as baboons with the possible result of racial disharmony for which Zimbabwe might then stand condemned by others in the global village.
To be sure Zimbabwe is still not out of the woods given the fact that Western economic sanctions remain in place in spite of the Government’s strenuous re-engagement initiatives to make peace with those countries still at daggers drawn with our Government.
What therefore, in this writer’s humble opinion appears necessary is for those in power today and tomorrow to continuously chlorinate their lives with prayers and supplication for God’s favour to remain at the helms of the present and future governments of the people by the people for the people.
Clothed in God’s mercies the rulers will not appear to the devil as potential landing ports for him and his satanic entourages to land and cause mayhem for our government and country to be ostracised by the rest of the civilised world.
Those with uncongested ears to hear have heard and must therefore, take the necessary steps to shield beautiful mother Zimbabwe and her people from any destabilising acts from both within our country and outside of it.
Online Reporter