By Pafungeyi Gore
Congratulations Zimbabwe for adding another year to make it forty.
Independence is a day to remember the resilience that the gallant sons and daughters endured under the york of racial discrimination, segregation, blatant violation of human rights.
This is a time we are supposedly required to unite as Zimbabweans and salute the selfless dedication that those who took up arms against the white minority made.
A plethora of demands forced the majority blacks to take up arms against the white regime.
Chief among them was the land question as blacks were forcebly removed from arable land and resettled in infertile sand soils like the Gwai and Shangani reserves.
Workers were also exploited at the workplace with certain positions reserved for the white race and this first led to several workplace related demonstrations which did not yield the intended results.
Several tax regimes were introduced which resulted in resentment of the white settler regime. And this led to unity between the guerrilla fighters and the peasants as the Smith regime spared no one in it’s dictatorship tendencies.
Pungwes were definitely introduced across the length and breadth of Zimbabwe as a way of educating the mass about the reasons for waging the armed struggle and the promise of a better Zimbabwe.
This created a crisis of expectation of the better days that await a new Zimbabwe.
And on the 18th of April 1980 a new Zimbabwe was born. New in terms of new faces that never changed the dictatorial system up to this day.
People expected fundamental reforms but alas those who dared to challenge the system were even threatened with beatings, killings as if they were talking of something out of this world.
To show his ruthlessness, the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe waged a war of attrition with the minority Ndebeles as a way of silencing dissent which resulted in more than 20000 deaths.
The freedom of association, assembly have just been a pipedream for peace loving Zimbabweans as the regime continue to abuse the fact that some of them were old when the whites were fought.
Nothing has changed 40 years on, it’s just old wine in a new bottle. And in infact if truth could be told Zimbabweans are worse off than they were in 1978 under the white minority regime in terms of economic front.
Instead of growing the economic cake Zanu PF continues to act like a wife waiting for divorce. The looting spree is just something going out of proportion.
A once thriving economy which was number five in Africa in 1980 with 23% manufacturing sector has been reduced to just a retail case where imported goods make the bulk of products in our shops. What a sorry state Zanu PF has superintendented over the past 40 years.
Zimbabweans remain optimistic of better days in the future and they are indeed resolute in pursuit of an egalitarian society.
And indeed an egalitarian society is possible within our lifetime…
