Online Reporter
Dr Obert Moses Mpofu
IN building a nation, the people’s wishes and aspirations should be considered.
After all, people are the building blocks of a nation.
Some dreams and aspirations are shared, but others are not.
All the same, the nation’s dream is the people’s dream. Indeed, nations do have dreams.
They dream of a prosperous future where people live in abundance.
They dream of peace, unity and development. So, they strive each day to see such dreams come to fruition.
Dreams are the stuff that nations are made of. But achieving a nation’s dream is easier said than done.
Immense sacrifice is often needed to turn dreams into reality. However, nations depend on people to move them forward.
The social contract is what binds us all.
Without it, entire nations and societies would crumble. Each generation always has the chance to shape the nation in a manner it sees fit. It has the task of making its dreams come true.
Ours was to free this nation from colonialism.
This used to be a dream we only wished would come true one day, and it did.
What I know is that one day the sons and daughters of the soil made a bold declaration that enough was enough.
Their desire was to restore the land that was once stolen to its rightful owners.
As I mentioned earlier, nation-building is a complex endeavour that tends to morph and change with the seasons. After freeing the country, we regained our valuable resources and later embarked on the next phase of reuniting the people with their land.
We also created the necessary conditions for our people to till and mine the land for prosperity.
But that was not enough.
In order to fully empower our people, we thought of giving them real rights to the land.
Again, this new exercise, spearheaded by His Excellency, President ED Mnangagwa, comes out of the realisation that the journey we have to travel is one that will require careful consideration as to how we will meet the people’s needs.
The lesson in all this is that you can never do too much for your people.
There is a lot that we have done to ensure that our people are empowered, and there is a lot more still to do. The journey to fully liberate our people continues. The Zimbabwean dream is premised on the land.
Our hopes for a brighter future are hinged on access to our land and how we will use it.
The land question is the most pertinent in Zimbabwe. Our people have often aspired and still dream of owning the land.
Those without land dream of one day owning it; those who have it dream of deriving their livelihoods from it. Without land, our people would perish.
It is all that they ever dream of.
Some of our people who are in the diaspora are increasingly retracing their footsteps, drawn by the allure of owning the land.
Land to the Zimbabweans is essentially what water is to fish. No other people have a deep yearning and unbreakable bond to their land as Zimbabweans.
The Zimbabwean dream is thus a dream to work the land for the benefit of all our people.
As we move forward in shaping the new Zimbabwean dream, lessons and experiences of the past should guide us so that our dream becomes a reality.
For now, the dream is to attain an upper middle-income economy by 2030.
After reaching this milestone, we will reshape our aspirations in ways that are beneficial to our people and nation as a whole.
Dr Obert Moses Mpofu is an academic and Secretary-General of ZANU PF. He writes in his own capacity.
