NEW: The farmer cultivating political peace

Leroy Dzenga

In 2019, John Muchenje was crowned Young Farmer of the Year and honoured by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development for impressive harvests at the 180-hectare farm he manages in Chirumhanzu, Midlands Province.

Seeing the success he was achieving in farming, Muchenje started 4-H Zimbabwe, an organisation meant to assist youths enhance productivity in the different sectors they operate.

“4-H Zimbabwe is a youth organisation; our main focus is to deal with youth empowerment and engagement.

“We want to see a Zimbabwe where young people collectively play a significant role in the sustainable development of our country,” he told The Sunday Mail Online in a recent interview.

The organisation covers four thematic areas – sustainable agriculture; food security; livelihoods; climate change and mitigation.

4-H has been promoting sustainable agriculture in rural areas like Chirumhanzu, Hurungwe and Bulilima.

It is putting youths in groups and assisting them start projects.

However, after a few years of operation, it dawned on Muchenje that political polarisation is standing in the way of productivity.

The organisation has since changed tact through civic engagement meant to ensure young people of different political persuasions can collaborate.

“Our thrust of pursuing food security was informed by the need for peace. Where there is no food, there is chaos.

“So, we felt it prudent to approach this issue from two angles: the food security end through training young people sustainable farming methods, and also addressing peace interventions.

“Lately, we have seen young people being used by some parties as tools of violence, so we decided to train young people to be able to discern.”

They have been doing training workshops and dialogue sessions with politically aligned youths from different parties.

4-H recently organised a sports gala which took place in Belvedere, Harare, featuring youths from ZANU PF, CCC, MDC-T, LEAD and other political parties.

More initiatives are in the pipeline.

“Under these thematic areas, we are looking at encouraging young people to register to vote and to perform their civic duties peacefully.

“Recently, we did an event that included all parties, where we were saying let us use sport to promote peace. We just preach the gospel of peace and tolerance,” said Muchenje.

It appears there is buy-in from the country’s major political parties.

“We have secured memoranda of understanding with ZANU PF Youth League, CCC Youth Assembly and MDC-T youths.

“We chose the three parties because we want to come up with the Zimbabwe Youth Charter on electoral process, which will be a code of conduct that will guide how young people participate in politics.

“We need to do away with young people being used for violence; they should instead be ambassadors of peace.”

Muchenje admits that pitching the idea to political parties was not smooth-sailing.

“At first it was a challenge. Whenever you are dealing with politicians, they use a cautious approach.

“We started engaging political parties in June last year, trying to share the idea. We told them that instead of waiting for 2023, we have to start building trust now.

“It was a challenge securing meetings with political players, but as we started showing them the project concepts, they came on board,” he said.

So far, they have trained 75 peace ambassadors, with ZANU PF, CCC and MDC-T providing 25 youths each.

“We also did a project orientation where we trained the top 10 youth leaders from the main parties we have MOUs,” Muchenje added.

There are plans to decentralise the programmes to districts across the country and specific focus in areas identified as hotspots of political polarisation.