(HERALD) 100 Percent Empowerment, Total Uhuru
100 Percent Empowerment, Total UhuruBy Cde Patrick Chinamasa
COMRADE President, let it be recorded here that our party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, has always been about winning back the People’s Power and reposing it where it naturally should reside, that is, in the Zimbabwean people.
Colonial conquest and occupation was about foreigners stealing power from us the indigenes of the country. As a result, we were disempowered. The act of organising the Zimbabwean people initially as civic protest groups, then as formal political parties beginning with the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), through to the National Democratic Party (NDP), then Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu), up to Zimbabwe African National Union, was itself a seminal act of recovering national space and power through combinations, through collective action against white settler colonialism. Organised, united, focused, we were on the road to recovering People’s Power.
Still much more was needed before we could dislodge illegitimate power wielded by the minority white settler community by virtue of conquest and occupation. The settlers were obdurate; the settlers would not voluntarily give up power to the African people of Zimbabwe. They resisted, oppressed, suppressed, imprisoned, detained, discriminated, expropriated, maimed, killed.
They used guns; they used institutionalised violence in the form of an illegitimate, unilateral rebel government. Zanu-PF, through its anteceding liberation movements — Zanu and Zapu — went out to source arms of liberation, arms with which to back up and enforce the people’s bid for deserved power. The gun was itself an instrument of empowerment, a tool with which to dismantle illegal settler power which translated into powerlessness of the Zimbabwean people.
Inch by inch, battle by battle, day by day, year by year, the people’s struggle redrew political power relations in the country, in favour of the Zimbabwean people. 18th April, 1980 marked the formal transfer of that hard- fought power gain for the Zimbabwean people. It was and remains a milestone in our people’s political empowerment.
I wish to stress, Cde President, that in this struggle, many lives were lost. Many people were maimed. Many disappeared. Many were displaced. Still others lost careers and personal estates. That was the huge price Zanu-PF and the struggling people of Zimbabwe had to pay. They were never daunted, never discouraged by the countless setbacks that attended their liberation effort.
They gave 100 percent effort and commitment towards this foundational bid for national empowerment which we now capture through the "Total Independence and Sovereignty". One hundred percent was the effort, People’s Political Empowerment was the immediate result, Total Independence, the ultimate goal.
Our theme for the run-off is thus steeped in our history of Independence struggle. It captures the values; it captures the effort we commit to this nation, yes, captures the ultimate goal we have set for ourselves as a free African people who cherish their collective freedom. It implies what we shun and seek to avoid as we move into the future, namely the reversal of our historic gains, namely the return of foreign rule and occupation, whether direct or indirect. I state here and now that a people cannot cede a portion of their defining power to the outsider, to the foreigner, without leaving less for themselves. For a free people, there is nothing like a fraction of Independence, a fraction of Sovereignty, a fraction of freedom. National Independence must be total, must be 100 percent!
This is where we differ fundamentally with the opposition who find it appropriate to tinker with the People’s Power; who find it normal to give away to settler farmers who are opposed to our Independence, our very land, itself a concrete marker of the extent of our Freedom and Independence. They have no difficulty in inviting foreign intrusion into the affairs of our nation.
Through them, the American legislature can afford to usurp the powers of the national legislature, oust it even by arrogating to itself the power and right to make laws, to play God over us through sanctions. Today the opposition and its servile civil society are Anglo-American, which means the will of foreigners is shaping our First Estate.
The People’s Power, won in 1980 after a hard-fought struggle, is in mortal danger. The political question we thought we had resolved in 1980, is back. Hence our theme: 100 Percent Empowerment; Total Independence. It is a clarion call, a loud call to all Zimbabweans to defend their political gains while setting their sights on the exercise of real authority in the affairs of their country.
Our theme spells out Zanu-PF’s abhorrence of foreign control.
It does not suggest a hatred of foreigners, a xenophobic insularity. That cannot be Zanu-PF politics, given its history and the history of its struggle.
We built our struggle on moral and material solidarity from across the globe. The Soviet Union gave support. The People’s Republic of China gave support. Most Eastern bloc countries then supported our struggle. So did Cuba. Here in our region, we had the Frontline States; we had most of Africa behind us.
We are a political creature of international goodwill and solidarity. So are many liberation movements in our region. But this was solidarity against the West whose governments stood with Ian Smith in oppressing us.
Today, the threat to our Total Independence comes from the same Western governments who interfere in our politics and economy. We are opposed to this kind of foreign interference and country. It diminishes our Independence; it disempowers us as a people. This is the nature of neo-colonialism.
But we welcome foreigners who seek mutually beneficial relations with us, foreigners who respect our sovereignty and invest and work within the limits it sets. We believe in mutually gainful partnerships with all people of goodwill for such partnerships are always empowering: by way of capital; by way of skills, by way of technology; by way of markets; by way of trade.
To these kinds of partnerships, we give 100 percent effort.
Our people will have a stake and thus will not be alienated as before. Our people will not be mere suppliers of cheap labour; they will be part owners, part workers and thus real players in the economy. We cannot be mere marginals in Independence, itself the curse of the rest of Africa.
So the call for 100 percent empowerment is not anti-foreigners, anti-foreign investment. Rather, it is a recognition that Zimbabweans are investors in their right, but whose readiness to play a meaningful part in their economy may have been qualified by colonial history and legacy.
It is a recognition that foreign investors stand to gain by turning Zimbabweans into partners, not servants, as this secures their future in the country.
I add Cde President that we are talking about the empowerment of all those persons who call themselves Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural. That too, Cde President, is the complexion of our theme.
We want all our people to be active economically so this economy grows in leaps and bounds on the back of all its people.
It is not donor aid which never comes anyway, which will change the fortunes of our people and our country.
It is none but ourselves, which is why we are scornful of cheap promises made to the Zimbabwean people by the West through the opposition.
America will not give any billions to Zimbabwe. Britain, which only managed 36 million pounds since our Independence in respect of its obligations on land, cannot suddenly wake up to be a born-again "Father Christmas".
These two imperial countries have not put a dime in Iraq which they occupy. Instead they are pillaging resources of that occupied, disempowered country.
They cannot possibly have a greater charitable disposition towards us, which they never showed anyway in the 90 long years they were here.
Our theme implies public policy which is interventionist. Empowerment goes beyond the issue of the hard economy. It includes education, itself an area of our party’s greatest success. Literacy is a sine qua non for all-round empowerment. It is empowerment in its own right.
We think especially about the girl child who must continue to be supported.
We think also about our educational system which has been destabilised by sanctions and would need to be revamped and re-equipped. We are particularly mindful of our teachers who need their dignity back, who need to be empowered.
Our theme addresses skills development, itself so important to inserting the Zimbabwean people in their economy.
Much has been done already. A lot more remains to be done so our people — especially our youth — have a place in the sun. The theme envisages a very robust Youth Affirmative Action.
Our theme looks at access to social services, starting with health.
It encompasses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), calling on our Government to reconnect with the developmentalist agenda of the 1980s, all set against a recovering economy. Partly because of sanctions, we have seen the reversal of those major social gains we had notched in the first two decades of our Independence. The issue of national housing is key.
The theme also addresses the legal domain, declaring war on all laws and by-laws which have tended to disable our people, particularly those operating in SMEs.
Our theme pays special focus on the financial sector in which we have made significant gains. We are looking at the whole regime of accessing credit, capital and other financial services which allow our people to be economic players.
Yes, it looks at special windows for our youth and women who need to be helped out of the present morass of marginalisation.
It looks at the whole regime of support to agriculture, directing that such support be part of an integrated empowerment package.
100 Percent Empowerment and Total Independence is Zanu-PF’s belief in the Zimbabwean people.
It is a statement that the people of Zimbabwe come first, indeed a rendering of your worldview, your lifelong testament as a freedom fighter, a nationalist, a proud African, a nation-builder.
l Cde Chinamasa is the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs; and chairman of the Zanu-PF Media Sub-Committee.
Labels: PATRICK CHINAMASA, ZIMBABWE
posted by MrK @ 12:34 AM
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