The Sunday Mail
Rangu Nyamurundira
The devil that torments our revolution does not lie within social media, itself a mere platform. The anti-revolution devil lies within narratives, in hashtags designed and calculated to disarm Zimbabwe’s enterprise that is our pursuit of an indigenous economy. There has been a systematic wave of narratives well-structured and disseminated to create an image of our country in a perpetual state of hopelessness.
It is a narrative that has sought to scribe our economic revolution as abandoned, and to portray Zimbabwe as being on the brink of civil war.
Those are the narratives that currently shadow social media.
The private media have endeavoured to scribe a new heroism in the likes of Mawarire, Mkwananzi and Mahiya to legitimise an anti-revolution narrative and undermine the legacy of President Mugabe to enable the undoing of the pursuit of an indigenous economy that he leads and inspires.
And yet these media platforms can never be the preserve of a few anti-revolutionaries.
What must worry us is that their anti-revolutionary narrative makes the revolution reactive, rather than proactive in defining and propagating its own narrative that will nurture and mobilise its cause.
Shall we be entrapped in paralysing narratives of despair that only arouse anarchy, or shall the revolution propagate narratives that stir hope, of game-changers within the economic revolution who ignite new energies to feed our resolve for economic liberation?
Consider these two narratives.
The first is the anti-revolution narrative, overloaded and over-subscribed on media platforms to entrap disgruntled youth and incite anarchy.
The second would be a narrative acknowledging champions whose innovations, enterprise and resilience kindle revolutionary fires, and yet such narrative finds itself negligently left in the shadows, off media platforms.
The first narrative is one that embraces graduates in their gowns and caps, taking to the streets to play bhora remakweshe in demonstration of their joblessness.
It is a narrative choreographed to portray Zimbabwe’s youth as a lost demographic group whom the economic revolution has deprived of livelihoods and scared away foreign investors portrayed as the preserve of job-creation.
The street-balling graduates are ignorant of the irony in their narrative; that it is in their learned minds, thanks to the revolution’s education policy, where they cannot apply acquired intellect and innovation to judiciously exploit a new indigenising economy placed before them to construct livelihoods.
So, their plight of joblessness becomes only as protracted as minds are made to embrace an anti-revolution narrative that dismisses otherwise God-sent indigenisation and economic empowerment.
Now, consider the second narrative of young people who are Zimbabwe’s Champions and Heroes of the Economic Empowerment Revolution, invested in by their Government’s empowerment programme and beginning to blossom our new indigenous economy.
And yet this second narrative has been confined to the shadows, has not found its way onto the mainstream media platform.
Take for example, Dr Simba Makuni and Dr Aejaz Anjum who started their medical enterprise, both aged 29 years and barely graduated.
Three years later, they have turned challenges in our health sector into an investment grade asset now signed up to by India’s SPS Hospital.
Their vision is to have Zimbabwe become the continent’s medical tourism destination.
They employ 70 people.
Another ZimCHEER champion and hero is Mike Mutasa who, at 23 years embraced land reform to become a shaker in the agriculture sector at his Banket farm.
Now 38, Mutasa masters his entire 270 hectares, having diligently applied Government support, contrary to narratives that youths divert such support to cars and women.
His 2015-16 harvest of 2 740 tonnes of maize and 12 000 tonnes of oil seed is testament that “badza harinyepi”. It has won him a double at the Zimbabwe Young Farmer Awards.
Mutasa has never been to any agricultural school whatsoever. But look at him now. He has established an agriculture training institution at his farm, currently with five students, including from the University of Zimbabwe and Chinhoyi University of Technology.
One needs only observe his 11-year-old son, Mike Jr, operate a centre pivot on his own to understand vision-mapping and investing in the sustainability and success of a revolution.
Mutasa’s innovation, resilience and enterprise are in sharp contrast to the team of graduates who prefer to play bhora remakweshe in the streets.
The difference between him and his degreed peers is that he long embraced the revolution’s new indigenous economy. His narrative is working the revolution’s land into productivity. He has chosen not to be a degreed fool.
Which narrative must we have placed upon media platforms then, whether public or private, and to the benefit of jobless social media owls?
The one breeds despair and incites anarchy, while the other narrative will inculcate hope, stir innovation and enterprise to drive our revolution to its realisation.
It is time the revolution, all its institutions, agencies, departments and advocates decided to wither away and die, or be nourished into “An empowered society and a growing economy”.
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and advocate for Zimbabwe’s indigenisation and economic empowerment programme
