"A nation without a vision is lost!" especially one at the mercy of a tyrant's whim!

“A people without a vision is lost,” said Magari Mandebvu. Well you are spot on there.

 

Zimbabwe has some of the best agricultural land in the world with great weather to boot before independence the country had a booming agricultural sector producing food and cash crops like tobacco. We produced enough for our own food needs and exported surplus; we were the breadbasket of the region.

 

The country’s agricultural sector has since collapse and since 2000 we have had to import food or else starve. This year with the economy is a real mess with companies closing right, left and centre, unemployment has soared to 90% plus and 16% or 2 million are now living in abject poverty; millions will have no money to buy food.

 

We are starving in the Garden of Eden!

 

In 2006 Zimbabwe discovered it has alluvial diamonds in Chiadzwa and Marange valued at $800 billion. There is a hive of activity there right now but sadly the nation is not getting even a dollar in revenue. Foreigners and a select few Zimbabweans are benefiting from this bounty. According to Partnership Africa Canada, President Mugabe pocketed $ 2 billion from his share of the looting and plundering of Marange diamonds in 2012 alone. And yet the nation is failing to supply something as basic as clean running water; there is no money to buy water treatment chemicals, replace old water pumps, etc.

 

Ever since the nation attained her independence in 1980 this Zanu PF regime has ridden rough shod over the people’s hopes and dreams of freedom, liberty and human rights and a life with human dignity. The regime has denied the people the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life!

 

Of course we are lost; this is not the Zimbabwe we had hoped for. We really did not have a clearly defined vision of what kind of Zimbabwe we wanted.

 

“The first point is equality: we are all equal before the law,” wrote Mandebvu. “We may differ in intellect, physical strength and wealth, but we all share, everyone from the President to the blind beggar woman, a common humanity. We have equal right to life and to all we need to support it and grow, the freedom to express ourselves and vote for our leaders and to pursue our own development as long as this doesn’t interfere with the rights of others.”

 

Most Zimbabweans never paid much attention to what independence was all about, none of all this vision stuff; they were content to leave everything to the nation’s leaders (leader, as it turned out to be a one-man dictatorship) confident they had the vision and knew what is best for us all. They expected we will all live happily ever after, just as in the fairy tales.

 

Now that we all know this is not the fairy tale ending we expected, one hopes that the people will sit up and pay attention because we need to a clearly defined common vision.

 

During the war people attended all-night political rallies hence the name Pungwe (All Night). It was at these rallies that the people should have been initiated on the essence of “equality before the law” as the foundation of our freedom and liberty. Sadly the nights were wasted in repeating meaningless slogans, singing and some half-digested Marxist-Leninist ideological crap.

 

It is sad that very few Zimbabweans will ever see Mandebvu’s article laying the foundation for the development of the nation’s common vision. Judging from the poor voter turnout during the June 2015 by-elections where as few as 5% bothered to take part in the elections; it is clear that many Zimbabweans have been denied a meaningful vote and so they have given up the fight to have this right and all the other freedoms and rights restored.

 

To Mandebvu’s clarion call for the nation to think and develop a common vision because “a people without a vision is lost” (God knows we are lost) is to add two things:

 

1. In 1980 we the people were naïve to believe that the nation’s liberation war heroes and heroines will serve us the people our freedoms, human rights and our share of the nation’s wealth and riches as a matter of cause. It was our duty to first of all develop and understand our freedoms, rights, etc. and then to ensure all these freedoms and rights are honour and hold these in power to account for any shortfalls.
    
   After 35 years of independence the nation is hopelessly lost because we the people failed in our task to develop a vision and/or safe guard these freedoms and rights, with our very lives if need be.
    
2. Until we develop a clearly defined vision and commit our very lives to safe guarding that vision this nation will remain lost, plundering from pillar to post, starving in the Garden of Eden, for generations to the end of time.
    
   In the long run people always get the government they deserve; we certainly deserve the incompetent, corrupt and oppressive Mugabe and Zanu PF dictatorship complete with the whole galaxy of the equally incompetent and corrupt opposition parties.
    

We need to develop a common vision with clearly define values and red lines beyond which no one is allowed to cross. The present set up in which it is only Mugabe and a select few in the ruling elite who dictate everything like Gods and we are expected to follow like sheep was doomed to fail and it has.

 

Zimbabwe has the resources and potential to offer all Zimbabweans a peaceful, just and prosperous and fulfilling life but only when the basic right of all to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and the right to life are sacrosanct. These are not privileges to be granted to some and denied others at the whim of the dictator!

 

Whenever a dictator, a mere fallible mortal, abrogates to himself the powers of infallibility there is no end to the so cursed nation’s anguish, suffering and deaths.  We have allowed Mugabe to exercise absolute power over us for 35 years and now we are paying dearly for our folly!