The Sunday Mail
Zim Asset speaks to “availing and increasing economic opportunities for youths” and the “financial inclusion of innovative youth”.
It was critical that on the eve of Zanu-PF’s Sixth National Congress, the party’s deputy secretary for youth affairs, Cde Kudzi Chipanga, declared that the youth – as the vanguard of Zanu-PF – would protect Zimbabwe, and President Mugabe and his family “whenever we feel he is under threat”.
He said: “Anyone who has been implicated in these dirty tricks and treasonous activities of undermining the authority of the President and First Secretary of Zanu-PF, Cde RG Mugabe, must excuse themselves from taking part in the Sixth Zanu-PF National People’s Congress.”
These words must now echo across Zimbabwe’s youth constituency, which nearly capitulated to factional politics during the Zanu-PF Youth Conference in August.
It was at this conference that attempts were made to turn our political capital into 30 pieces of silver.
The ultimate objective was, of course, to betray the ideological soul of Zimbabwe’s pursuit of total independence: President Mugabe. We are a country in pursuit of total independence founded upon establishing an indigenous economy.
It is President Mugabe, despite the Western odds stacked against him, who has boldly thrust our nation on the revolutionary trajectory of economic sovereignty.
The youth’s political capital, thus, wisely renewed his leadership and Presidency on July 31, 2013, this time to be unadulterated by an inclusive Government that had become a negative factor to his vision for a Zimbabwean economy liberated from Western handlers.
And yet, the greatest threat to President Mugabe lay within; in Zanu-PF’s Presidium, which we all the while believed shared the President’s vision.
They plotted their Ides of March.
They manipulated the youth constituency like pawns in factional power plays and in the process threatened far-reaching consequences to the heart of Zimbabwe’s pursuit of total sovereignty.
Rightly so, President Mugabe bemoaned a youth robbed of principle, with loyalties corrupted by the highest bidding.
It has been a moment’s blur to President Mugabe’s vision for an indigenous economy guaranteed by the youth, in which he advocates that “all projects aimed at the country’s economic growth should always focus on and emphasise the crucial role played by our young people, the future of our country”.
With the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio Economic Transformation his Government’s priority, President Mugabe remains alive to the stakes at hand.
He continues to reaffirm the critical role of the youth.
In his own words: “If Zim-Asset has to make the economy grow, it indeed is crucial for the youth to understand it, own it and support it, drive it and anchor it.”
Gamatoxic factionalism plotted to poison the political will of the party’s youth and unrepentant adversaries found weaknesses.
The United States, always the opportunistic predator, has endeavoured to turn the loyalty of Zimbabwe’s youth.
Washington made its latest move at the US-Africa Business Forum in August.
US president Barack Obama responded to young Takura Chingozo – who had challenged American sanctions robbing Zimbabwe’s youth of economic aspirations – by seeking to justify maintenance of sanctions, while luring young Zimbabweans to meet with America to propose economic projects that would allow his country to determine what will “advance as opposed to retard the progress for the Zimbabwean people”.
American arrogance believes itself best-suited to “advance” the economic progress of Zimbabwe’s youth.
It thinks us ignorant to its agenda to position itself to manipulate our political will to serve economic interests hostile to President Mugabe’s ideology.
Mr Obama is certainly well-briefed on the political capital of Zimbabwe’s youth that invested in indigenisation and empowerment in the July 31 elections by approving of President Mugabe and a Zanu-PF Government long declared by Mr Obama to be an “unusual threat” to America’s interests.
The US president will, thus, retain sanctions to kill the hope nurtured by indigenisation and the implementation of Zim Asset, as America seeks to isolate President Mugabe from the very youth constituency he advocates and endeavours to have placed at the heart of Zimbabwe’s budding indigenous economy.
US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently reiterated American machinations of a “post-Mugabe Zimbabwe”, to the extent of confessing to its use of local proxies, surely to be re-engaged once the treasonous job is done and have them impose America’s monopolising economic interests here.
America’s agent arrogantly tells the world they engage more extensively with civil society, the Press and begins to engage some Government officials, all from Zanu-PF post-July 31, 2013 to press them to change regime.
But what change and by whom, only a year after we decisively rid Government of America’s opposition proxies?
Is President Mugabe not under threat, his revolutionary Zanu-PF sought to be tamed?
Is it not time that Zimbabwe’s defining political capital, most valued in the majority youth constituency, is placed at the heart of our emerging indigenous economy to anchor and safeguard our total sovereignty?
Sadly, all we have witnessed is a Zanu-PF Government given to factionalism and uncommitted to President Mugabe’s vision for a youth-enhanced and driven indigenous economy.
Instead of bold interventions, their excuse for ineptitude has been the charge of non-performing youth loans.
Given such “non-performing” youth loans, should they not be asking more pertinent corrective questions, which would surely reveal how many youths diligently applied for such loans only to be failed by a corrupted indigenising economy, moreso one allowed to be molested by cheap foreign goods and services?
The record will reveal that youth enterprises invested primarily in agriculture, only to have their produce rejected by a local market importing and, indeed, smuggling millions of dollars worth of tomatoes, potatoes and chickens that have corruptly benefited a few within the very Zanu-PF Government meant to facilitate broad-based economic empowerment.
It has been the ultimate betrayal to President Mugabe’s vision, a betrayal that has brazenly sought to depose him to feed selfish economic greed.
The question begging an answer is: How has the rest of Government, its ministries of Agriculture, Finance, Industry and Commerce, SMEs and Mines, as well as parastatals and the State Procurement Board, complemented the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment to ensure effective and sustainable youth empowerment?
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, read with the National Youth Policy, prioritises youth empowerment and guarantees youth a minimum 25 percent quota in agriculture, mining, commerce, tourism and industry.
To what extent, if any, have the respective line ministries and State institutions aligned with such legislative intent and policy at the heart of an indigenous economy?
Zim Asset speaks to “availing and increasing economic opportunities for youths” and the “financial inclusion of innovative youth”.
Indeed, Zim-Asset’s vision of “an empowered society and a growing economy” is very futuristic in nature and application, certainly to be achieved by engaging the youth.
The Zanu-PF representatives we gave mandates in Government have been too preoccupied with schemes to usurp a Presidential powers still due another four years to the extent of crippling Government work under the auspices of the Zanu-PF 2013 election manifesto and Zim-Asset.
What “Accelerated Implementation of Zim Asset” will Zanu-PF achieve by 2018 to again win over a growing youth political capital when such youth’s economic enterprise is not effectively engaged and left exposed to corrupting factional intent and the West’s malicious gestures?
President Mugabe has always been and remains our real hope for achieving an indigenous economy.
Our political capital should be invested in President Mugabe.
He is the chief whip who can direct Zanu-PF and Government to toe the line of our indigenous aspirations for sustainable socio-economic transformation.
We must without hesitation mobilise and rally our youthful energies and enterprise to the entrusted custodian of our economic aspirations.
Simply put – VaMugabe chete!
Rangu Nyamurundira is a member of the Zimbabwe Youth Council Board. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of the ZYC Board.
