The Sunday News
By President of the Republic of Zimbabwe HE ED Mnangagwa
Our history records that the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress ( SRANC) was launched on 12 September, 1957. September 12, the date of its launch, coincided with Occupation Day on which settlers celebrated the effective takeover of our country by the then British South Africa Company, BSAC, Cecil John Rhodes’ instrument for our colonisation.
That the SRANC was born on such a day amounted to a potent gesture of defiant challenge to white settler rule, its commemorative rituals and ethos.
There was more to this development. The SRANC was an amalgam of the Bulawayo-based African National Congress which had been launched in 1952 by late Joshua Nkomo, Knight Maripe, Jason Ziyapapa Moyo, Edward Ndlovu and Francis Nehwati, and the then Salisbury-based City Youth League launched in September 1956 by James Chikerema, George Bonzo Nyandoro, Dunduza Chisiza and Edson Sithole, ostensibly to oppose arbitrary fare increase by the United Transport Company, but fundamentally to begin the agitation for self-rule. Significantly, founders of both organisations were youthful, militant and national in outlook.
The SRANC would be banned in 1959, to be replaced by the National Democratic Party, NDP, founded soon after, in January 1960. Similarly, the NDP would be banned barely a year into its life, to be replaced promptly by the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZAPU, launched in 1961. ZAPU would split in 1963, creating the Zimbabwe African National Union, ZANU.
The lesson to draw from this short history is that from the days of the City Youth League to those of ZAPU, and later of ZANU, African Nationalism in Zimbabwe routinely incorporated militant youths who took protest politics to higher and bolder levels of confrontation, thus anticipating our Armed Liberation Struggle.
Indeed, when the mother political bodies decided on armed struggle as the principal tool for Zimbabwe’s liberation, the youths became key drivers of that risky decision.
We were recruited into ZAPU, and later constituted as the Crocodile Gang when we were still teenagers. We received military training in various countries, chiefly Egypt, Ghana, China, Cuba and the then Soviet Union, to sow seeds of the Armed Struggle. Zimbabwe’s youths were under arms.
Like many of our youths nowadays, a handful of us were in the diaspora from where the national clarion call for Zimbabwe’s liberation reached us.
We did not hesitate, or use our diaspora status as an excuse for non-participation in the resolution of this key National Question. We only needed to be Zimbabweans; everything else was secondary.
We joined hands with those from home, all to jump into trenches of the risky Armed National Liberation Struggle. So, regardless of geographical placement at the material time, Zimbabwean youths were pioneers of Zimbabwe’s Armed Liberation Struggle, indeed its early crop of martyrs.
This trend of a revolutionary vanguard youth continued as the Liberation Struggle intensified, right up to our Independence. My view and plea is that this revolutionary spirit must continue to imbue and drive you, our today’s youths, so you remain true to the tradition of your gallant predecessors.
My cursory reference to our history is meant to underline the centrality of the Youth in the Struggle which delivered a free Zimbabwe whose Independence commemorate tomorrow.
That it is a National Day for all Zimbabweans, does not diminish the fact that this is a day which a generation of brave young Zimbabweans were principal makers, all through huge sacrifices.
Out of the more than 100 000 Zimbabweans who perished in our protracted Struggle, a bigger percentage came from the Youths, combining those who bore arms of war, and those who collaborated with them under the banner of the two liberation armies, ZANLA and ZPRA. Youths drawn from all walks of life: the unemployed, the rural, the urban, in schools and colleges, out of school, and those already employed.
It was a generational call, one underwritten by, and sealed in, blood. This makes our National Day speak to the Zimbabwean Youth in a direct, poignant way.
Today I address you as one who was part of this generation. All my peers are gone. Many are still with us who picked the fight from my generation. As survivors of this brave generation, we thus bear the burden to communicate the ideals which motivated us, often to death in many cases.
Many of us carry scars we do not wish on any of you.
What we wish and pray of you and generations that come after you is a comparable spirit and willingness to sacrifice, should national circumstance ever demand that, now or in future. Nations are defended by their youths, which means you cannot avoid the duty and responsibility to sacrifice for your Nation and people, much as you may choose to betray or desert it.
Youths who lack sufficient national consciousness and attachment to the cause of their people can never be relied upon to defend or liberate their people, let alone be makers and defenders of its freedom, independence and sovereignty.
Rather, they subserve foreign rule, revere false heroes, worship false gods, accept foreign trinkets, and thus fail to become keepers of the precious sovereign Independence paid for by the sacred blood of their heroic predecessors. Such misguided youths threaten our Independence.
Both in nationalist politics and in the armed struggle, we witnessed countless contradictions, some of them quite bloody and costly to lives, and to the liberation project itself.
We went through serious divisions, splits, armed insurrections, narrow politics of tribe and region, actions of counter-revolution and outright betrayal, before we finally got our hard-earned freedom and Independence. From all these adversities, we learnt the priceless value of unity in struggle.
Unity is the most invincible and most dependable weapon against the oppressor whose illegal tenure can only get secured and prolonged by the sheer disunity of the oppressed.
Forty-two years on, this hard-learnt and earned lesson from our Struggle remains immutable. Our reply to the enemy’s divide-and-rule tactic must be the unite-and-stay united precept which we all must internalise to levels of collective reflex. Independence thus means National Unity, National Unity for all times and generations, the youths especially.
Our African history teaches us that forces of disunity always seek to mobilise and weaponise the Youths. A nationally conscious generation of Youths, more so one standing on the shoulders of a generation of Liberators, is harder to mislead; it shuns counter-revolutionary divisions that weaken our Nation and its cause.
Such divisive tendencies include baneful tribalism, regionalism, factionalism, clannish and cliquish tendencies which work against collective national outlooks and focus. You our youths must never retreat from a united, unitary Nation of Zimbabwe which is home and comfort to each and all.
With Zimbabwe now free, and in the wake of our historic Land Reform Programme, which validated our Independence and thus should never be reversed, the key National Question which now begs is that of wealth-creation for national recovery and inclusive growth and development.
We will never tire of reminding you that, NYIKA INOVAKWA NEKUTONGWA NEVENE VAYO/ILIZWE LAKHIWA LIBUSWE NGABANIKAZI, or tire of preaching the virtues of inclusive growth whose fruits are evenly spread and enjoyed, so no one, no community, no region is left behind or denied.
Unevenness breeds divisions which undermine our claim to unity, our quest for stability, and the goal and fact of consolidating a unitary state spelt out in our Constitution. As with the Liberation Struggle, the Youths must be in the forefront of this new frontier of Struggle.
To play a vanguard role in this new struggle is to accept AGENCY implied in the precept of, NYIKA INOVAKWA NEKUTONGWA NEVENE VAYO/ILIZWE LAKHIWA LIBUSWE NGABANIKAZI. To be the agent of building and developing your country means embracing the pangs and burdens of repairing and growing its sanctions-damaged Economy. By-standers can never be agents; those who surrender to, and look helpless in the face of foreign pressure can never be builders of a solid Nation.
Quite often and especially for our African Continent, Nations are born out of defiance of a cruel destiny by highly resolved peoples. We did just that during the Struggle. You our youths must show such resolve, defy circumstances which seek to belittle you, aspire to lead, to create and to own national wealth, thus writing your own destiny.
Politically, we have incorporated the Youths in different echelons of power, including in Cabinet. In the Legislature, we are pushing for a youth quota which you will soon get.
In respect of land allocation, we are doing the same, all with a view to building an empowered generation of youths which gravitates towards the centre of national economic processes. We are creating opportunities; your responsibility is to seize and act upon them so you deserve them in the first place, and so you translate them into real gains on the ground, going forward.
There is space for you in Agriculture and related value chains, in mining, in industry, in commerce and, more critically, in across-sector startups which Government is ready to finance.
To that end, every Ministry and Department of Government should have a Youth Desk which is youth-centric, approachable and disposed to mentoring you. Such a desk is not a favour to the Youths; it is Government’s duty and responsibility to a stratum hardest hit by sanctions-induced unemployment.
With the gradual upturn in our economy, your fortunes are set to take a turn for the better, thus enabling you to edge closer towards the heart of the National Economy.
We are developing solutions to the currency turbulence, and the consequent instabilities in the market. All our programmes on infrastructure, in mining and in revamping our industry, are aimed at creating employment opportunities especially for you.
Equally, the vocational schools we are revamping and adding, are meant to equip you with skills that make you both employable and self-employing. All these opportunities must be seized.
To youths in our colleges and other tertiary institutions, I want to say, so much has been spent on you. In reverse, that means more is expected from you.
We changed the curriculum to ensure all our tertiary institutions produce graduates who are doers, armed with practical, problem-solving competencies so direly needed in our economy and country.
My spirits are lifted by extraordinary developments happening in all our universities and technical colleges.
Innovation Hubs have triggered creative effervescence in our youths.
We are witnessing the birth of a generation of inventors and innovators like never seen before in our country, and arguably on the African continent.
The book is becoming a ploughshare, indeed a trigger to a new spirit of ingenuity, inventiveness and an overriding spirit to problem-solve. Solutions are being generated through purposeful research and innovation.
The agile youth mind is now firmly coupled to the National Agenda. We are on the march, with Government weighing in through research grants, facilities and the registration of patents.
Likewise, industry is now more supportive than ever before, making it possible for us to quickly translate ideas into production lines and locally manufactured products. There must not be any let up to this transformative thrust.
Yes, you our Youths can!
Government’s call for resuscitation of old industrial plants and mines, and for greater import substitution in the Economy, in sum should create huge scope for the innovative youth. I challenge you to be part of the resurrection of ZISCO, and with it, our iron and steel industry.
Please dream big, gather courage to tease out new ideas; don’t fear to stumble on your way to your two feet as inventors and innovators. I pledge my commitment to compel Government to underwrite that whole innovative process, whatever reverses and false starts which might arise on the way to eventual success.
This is what our Independence means for your generation, indeed why we are making bold moves to equip schools and colleges, and to make our education free in phases.
Science, technology and innovation must be at the heart of our curriculum. Equally, no child of school-going age must be denied opportunities to enrol, learn and chase his or her dream.
My parting shot as we begin our forty three years of Independence is to warn you against drugs. I urge you to say No, No, No to drugs or any substances that threaten you with harm and ruin.
Those who push drugs to our youths seek to destroy our future as a Nation.
We must fight them with all means available, so this scourge is totally removed from our society.
Against this one threat, all of us must play a vigorous part, whatever our station or calling in life. After all, this is about our children, who are our future.
Happy 42nd Independence Anniversary to you all our valued Youths!
