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PRESIDENT Mugabe and all other Zanu-PF candidates have already won the elections to be held tomorrow. President Mugabe is an undoubted statesman of the world and a revolutionary icon par-excellence. His greatness was not thrust upon him but was achieved through commitment and sacrifice for his country’s freedom, liberty, unity, peace and development.
He spent several years in the colonial regime’s jails and detention at Sikombela. Where was Morgan Tsvangirai? What we know of him is that he ran away from recruitment to join the war in Buhera. He grew up to be a trade unionist with the late Gibson Sibanda. He did not even learn to be a trade unionist of impeccable substance from the works of our pioneer trade unionists like Dr Joshua Nkomo, Benjamin Burombo and Masotsha Ndlovu.
When I was the secretary general of the Commonwealth Association of Education and Training of Adults some years ago, I invited Tsvangirai at the Commonwealth seminar at the University of Zimbabwe.
We were embarrassed in that he had no paper to present and asked our officers to help him to write one. Cde Mugabe during the 1930s and 1940s was a teacher at Empandeni, Hope Fountain, Dadaya and Munali in Zambia before he went to Ghana. Admittedly Tsvangirai was not yet born.
President Mugabe was mentored by Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and came back in 1960 and joined the nationalist movement, the National Democratic Party in Highfield, Harare. In 1960 he distinguished himself in the revolutionary perspicacity such that he was appointed secretary for publicity and information up to the formation of Zapu at the end of 1960.
After several years in the colonial jails and restrictions President Mugabe became more resilient until he left the country through the help of Chief Tangwena of Manicaland. Where was Tsvangirai all this time?
After the fall of Ndabaningi Sithole, Zanu comrades at Mgagau asked President Mugabe to lead the armed struggle. In order to win the liberation struggle, we later formed the Patriotic Front led by President Mugabe and Dr Nkomo. The Patriotic Front seriously prosecuted the war of liberation.
This led to negotiations at Geneva, Malta and finally at Lancaster House culminating in the Lancaster House constitution which we have just abandoned for our own people-driven constitution. Where was Tsvangirai then?
After Independence the British looked for a spineless black Zimbabwean whom they would control. They found Tsvangirai.
They formed the Westminster Foundation consisting of the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party which put funds for the creation of MDC to fight for the return to Rhodesia the land and the mineral wealth in the country. Tsvangirai was the ideal candidate; he was transformed from Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to MDC president. Sibanda, then ZCTU president, was demoted as he was a strong Zapu member and was made Tsvangirai’s deputy at MDC.
The British and American agenda was regime change through the so-called MDC through which Tsvangirai dreams of winning elections. These elections are for the people of Zimbabwe to decide whether to keep the country and its resources or not.
President Mugabe has been, is still and will ever be committed to retaining the country and its resources to develop, empower people and educate youths and women and indigenise the economy and defend our sovereignty. Where is Tsvangirai in all this? Instead he went to Washington with his MDC team to ask America to impose illegal sanctions which have caused havoc in our country and is largely to blame for the suffering of the ordinary people. They have used the “economic hit man” as stated by a former top American CIA spy to throttle the Zimbabwean economy.
Sanctions were imposed on companies and institutions perceived to be supporting Zanu-PF and on individual Zanu-PF members.
This is the Tsvangirai who wants to win elections to rule this country under the heavy hand-holding of the imperialists which we defeated at war. This is the Tsvangirai who wants to tamper with our tried and tested security services.
Illegal sanctions have increased poverty among our people, loss of lives and falling of our economy. Our currency was hit as per the “economic hit man formula”.
Education infrastructural destruction, fall of hospital services and high morbidity and mortality of mothers and children are of Tsvangirai’s making.
President Mugabe, in spite of the illegal sanctions has developed Zimbabwe and its people. Black people have, since independence attained managerial and senior positions in industry, mining, agriculture, and education. Others own educational institutions. This was not the case at independence. There were no blacks in these areas and universities. All millions of people in employment, industry and banks, and institutions are products of President Mugabe’s visionary leadership.
His focus on education is seen by the expansion of the education system and computerisation of schools to the extent that Zimbabwe is among the top in Africa. In 1980 there were few government schools, under 200 at primary level and the rest were under missionaries. We now have thousands, with more than nine million students having gone through our schools since 1980.
Tsvangirai and all his followers are products and beneficiaries of President Mugabe’s Zanla and Nkomo’s Zipra liberation struggle and their post independence programmes. Tsvangirai is now fighting to reverse the gains of that liberation struggle.
In 1980 there was only one university with 200 black students and thousands of white students. We now have nine state universities and an open university with tens of thousands of students. The Zimbabwe Open University which his Excellency, President Mugabe asked me and Dr Ignatius Chombo to establish now has 23 000 students. We should have a state university in each province. President Mugabe is an educationist in his own right with more than seven honorary doctorates and degrees which he earned when he was in prison and detention in Sikombela. He is rightly the chancellor of all state universities.
Tsvangirai, on the other hand, cannot be a school headmaster.
President Mugabe is the only President in Africa and the world who has provided more than 15 000 young people from needy families university scholarships to study at South African universities. He has also provided cadetship scholarships to local universities for needy students.
Teachers colleges were only four at Independence, but with President Mugabe’s guidance ZINTEC teachers’ training was done to assist in teacher training while the teachers were teaching as untrained teachers.
Arrangements were made to train Science and Mathematics teachers in Cuba at the Island of Youths. This was later relocated to Zimbabwe and is now the Bindura University of Science Education. This was because Cuba could no longer carry on with the programme due to American sanctions on Fidel Castro and Cuba, our supporter.
In 1980 there were two technical colleges and now we have a technical college in each province and many vocational training centres in districts.
President Mugabe has carried on the land reform and resettlement programme as per Dr Joshua Nkomo’s design. Agricultural development has grown with more than 200 000 families resettled. Mechanisation has benefited more than 200 000 farmers. We now have black Zimbabweans owning banks, mines and industry.
Tsvangirai wants to reverse these gains as he says he wants to bring foreign investments to make our people workers through his Juice policy.
President Mugabe and Zanu-PF want Zimbabweans to control their own destiny, to control the means of production and being employers and patriotic through education, development, empowerment, indigenisation and more employment creation.
President Mugabe has kept Dr Nkomo’s advice that he must maintain unity and work with all of us from former Zapu and Zipra in the new united Zanu-PF in accordance with the Unity Accord of 1987. We are now a united nation due to the Unity Accord.
The good people of Zimbabwe — do not be fooled again by a colonial megaphone. We safely predict a resounding victory for Cde Mugabe and Zanu-PF on 31 July.
Dr Sikhanyiso Duke Ndlovu is the national secretary for education in the Zanu-PF Politburo. He is an educationist and researcher and former Government minister.
Online Reporter
derick.khumalo