The Sunday Mail
Rangu Nyamurundira
Brigadier-General (Retired) Asher Walter Tapfumaneyi’s proposal to arrange a heart-to-heart conversation between national liberation war veterans and young people is timely.
The Secretary for Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Ex-Political Detainees and Restrictees extended this refreshing invitation in two articles “New empowerment strategy in the works” and “Let’s have conversation between generations”, both published in The Sunday Mail on Independence Eve.
“We are now in the second phase of the liberation struggle where we are fighting on the economic front. To the young people, let us have a conversation, a dialogue between generations. We are a generation that remembers, a generation that fought the liberation war and there is a lot to learn from us.”
That was the statement, one that resonated across the Zimbabwean family.
And I venture to add that the heart-to-heart must remedy an alienated common purpose for “total Independence” between the generation of Zimbabwe’s political liberators and the post-Independence generation that must comprise tomorrow’s economic war veterans.
We are 36 years into political independence and in the heat of our struggle for economic liberation.
It is a unique struggle that requires the same spirit of sacrifice exhibited by our heroes of the First and Second Chimurengas.
Back then, imperialists used bullets and bombs, but the threat we face today derives from economic sanctions and neo-colonialism.
The battlefield demands unique weaponry: Expertise in commerce, industry and entrepreneurship.
The reality that must be acknowledged, though, is that Zimbabwe has capacitated its young people to become economic foot soldiers since Independence in 1980.
We are the young people who have been groomed through a rigorous education policy introduced by Zanu-PF, the political party our war heroes belong to.
However, something seems wrong here.
The bridging conversation between experience and an educated and expectant youth has only been a whisper into a debilitated economic revolution.
The unspoken emotion has only been let out via loud noises from frustrated young people who are unable to utilise their economic intellect and innovation.
Zimbabwe has so far failed to effectively transform dormant youth potential into “investment grade persons” as advocated by Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao under the Zimbabwe Youth Empowerment Strategy for Investment.
How many young people — despite all our capabilities — are given an opportunity to serve their nation in high Government offices, or to lead parastatals that have otherwise been stripped bare by recycled board members and chief executives?
Some have had to stand aside while the so-called captains of industry presided over private sector corruption while killing new ideas and innovation.
Most of the world is investing economically in young people who have fed their national economies with zest, ideas and innovation worth millions.
Zimbabwe’s young potential then serves those same foreign economies that impose sanctions and impoverish our Mother Land.
Have no doubt, we yearn for our moment to serve Zimbabwe and secure its prosperous future.
That is the “heart-to-heart” we must have in this 11th hour of our economic revolution when Zimbabwe’s fledgling indigenous economy must be condemned to darkness or nurtured in the dawn.
President Mugabe has consistently stated that young people must be the vanguard of our nation’s “total independence”.
Let the record be straight: No one despises/hates war veterans and their sacrifice.
Ours, rather, is a frustration at not being given our moment to use whatever know-how Zimbabwe has imparted to us to secure and guard her economic interests.
Young people cannot hate what defines them.
I, for one, derive my name from a grandfather whose life was lost in the liberation struggle as did his youngest son.
I never met them, yet the ideology that inspired their sacrifice speaks to and defines me today.
I remember when national heroine Amai Victoria Chitepo would walk into our church at All Souls Mission. From a distance, I, as many other young people did, watched with reverence, our aspirations reassured by her mere presence.
Such is their quality, this calibre of our war heroes and heroines, the serenity of their being is inspiration to our new generation’s purpose.
It is that quality that has young people fixated with President Mugabe, listening to his words of wisdom that reassure them that he has their backs even when they march into economic revolution.
That conversation, Rtd Brigadier-General Tapfumaneyi, is one that must speak to the potential of Zimbabwe’s young people, how we can be nurtured to unlock our potential and direct our positive energies towards our common economic fight.
The heart-to-heart must be for the future of young Zimbabwe, but only inasmuch as such a future is guaranteed by experience.
This gives the future a solid foundation and roots to thrive.
We are a young people drafting an empowerment strategy for investment; for the economy of Zimbabwe.
As such, we look forward to a conversation between generations. We owe it to Zimbabwe.
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and indigenisation and economic empowerment consultant. His views do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of any institution with which he is associated
