Leaders should remember where they come from

Ploughing back to the community that produced us or from which we are  operating is a virtue that needs to be emulated by all and sundry. We can call  ourselves national leaders but there is a village, parents, district,  province where we come from.

Leaders do not operate in a vacuum they all come from a wider society and their work in these communities define the persons  that they are.

The proud community should feel the warmth which the leader, their son or  daughter, is generating   among them and thus use the  works of their prominent member of society as a role model.

On Friday last week President Mugabe officially opened Landa John Nkomo High School, a school  that was build by Vice-President Nkomo, who hails from the district. It is the first school to have a fully equipped computer laboratory in the district designed to bring e-learning to the rural areas.

The President described Cde  Nkomo as a rare breed of leaders of our time with a clear vision of where the people of Zimbabwe should go.

“He knew very well that our  independence would be  meaningless if the national socioeconomic development  agenda is not addressed. It is through the desire to uplift the  livelihood of our people that he mobilised resources for establishing a secondary school in this remote area which is  one of  the districts that bore the brunt of the draconian racial policies of the settler governments, whose objective was  to under develop indigenous people,’’ said  President Mugabe.

We would like to commend Cde  Nkomo for a job well done and demand from other leaders to emulate this good example.

There is no leader who does not come from a village, who did not go to a small clinic,  who did not go to a miserable looking school. The question that begs to be answered is why we, who went up the social  ladder from these humble institutions, are failing to plough back and improve  them.

It is duty-bound upon us as leaders to bring development to our areas of origin instead of looking to donors and  governemnt all the time. Zimbabwe would be a better nation if all its leaders were to emulate the remarkable example set by Vice-President Nkomo who was moved by the plight of young people from his district who, after failing to proceed with their education, ended up going to South African where they did odd jobs and returned home in coffins.

We demand that all leaders go through some introspection. They need to  answer the question who should develop my school, the clinic where I was delivered and the road to my rural home?

The country is replete with prominent businesspersons, ranging from bus operators to manufacturing company proprietors and directors. If all these prominent persons take it upon themselves to uplift their areas, Zimbabwe would be the best there is in Africa.

Cde Nkomo is a living legend, we salute him. We would be most grateful to give more news coverage to more social responsibility  programmes from all our sons and daughters who are in Government or are chief executives of big companies. Those boreholes that have broken down in your village need your attention. This is the message from Cde Nkomo.

We need to remember where come  from.