How I would work with Chamisa to build a Zimbabwean bullet train?

As an inventor who holds two British University Degrees in Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering and Industrial Design, I was taught that a man with a dream is the man I must stick to. Nelson Chamisa is almost a decade younger than me, but, I like his valuable dreams.

If the boy took over as President of Zimbabwe, I would just say to him, "Sir, Zimbabweans want to see your bullet train dream transforming into reality and I am the man to transform it".

I can imagine a young dreamer dedicating a Billion Dollars and challenging me to build a cheap Solar Train to transport a thousand people from Harare to Bulawayo in one and a half hours.

My training in Industrial Design requires me to transform a hypothesis into an efficient finished product. Given a bullet train, I really do not know of any of the 30 000 Engineers in Zimbabwe who can't build that train.

I have head a lot of people saying Chamisa has childish unaffordable dreams, and I ask myself, "how is a bullet train unaffordable in Zimbabwe?" What is a bullet train? What complex components are there which can't be manufactured in an educated country such as Zimbabwe. Remember, I am not only talking about me, but about 30 000 more, Zimbabwean Engineers.

Every Zimbabwean Engineer knows how to wire an electric motor. Every Zimbabwean Engineer knows that we can make our own electric motors of any size without importing from bullish EU. Every Zimbabwean Engineer knows that if you can't make something as simple as an electric motor, you can't call yourself an Engineer. In a Bullet train, the only complex component is an electric motor and 30 000 Engineers in Zimbabwe would make that without any effort.

The only thing that Zimbabweans in general will worry about is, where to get the electricity from. Thus another case which kills most Zimbabwean Engineers.

The causes of early death in Zimbabwean Graduate Engineers, is to see Zimbabwe suffering from poverty in a country we know is excessively blessed with photovoltaic energy. Zimbabwean Engineers die of anxiety and anger that we live in a country which spends a Billion Dollars on AK 47s while our energy infrastructure of 1959 is dilapidated.   

As Zimbabwean Engineers, we know that if you connect solar panels along side your rail track from Bulawayo to Harare, you would have more energy than the country needs. You would power your bullet train to make three trips a day and also power homes during the day dedicating hydro and thermal plants to satisfy Industrial energy. We also know how we can store Solar energy, for night use, the Zimbabwean way, without using punitively priced storage batteries.

What we only lack to fulfil this in Zimbabwe, is a President with a soft and dreaming head. If Joshua Nkomo did not have a dream in 1957, that we could actually conquer Colonialism, we still would be suffering under Colonialism today. A dream is everything. So, we need soft young heads which dream in Zimbabwe.

Without a dream, one cannot even raise a family. I remember as a six-year-old boy in Selukwe in the seventies, we used to play "I am a Daddy, and you are a Mummy and she is our child". Those were soft heads full of dreams not hard heads full of doubt. Today we are real Daddies and Mummies although characters have swapped places.

If you run a company and you notice that there is just one doubter in the company, you better fire the doubter or close the company. Doubters are spoilers. They are empty, obstructive, loud and contagious. Even in a classroom at school, never sit near a doubter, if you do, you will fail. A doubter will help you to learn that mathematics is difficult even when you could do better. This even applies to wives or husbands in a marriage, if you marry a doubting wife who does not invest you in your dreams, and is always doubting and obstructing, you would have married an instrument of poverty and failure.

Dreams are everything. As a newly wed wife, if you do not hear your husband talking about wild, wild dreams, you would have fallen into perpetual poverty. Nothing that is achieved by other men, is impossible for your husband to achieve.

As a struggling student, nothing that is achieved by other students, is impossible for you to achieve. As a Nation, I want all Zimbabwean doubters of Chamisa's Bullet Train dream to tell me, which component of a bullet train, cannot be made by any of the 30 000 Engineers we have. Here in the UK alone, we have more than 8 thousand Zimbabwean Engineers.

If you break a child's ninky nonk toy train, you will find batteries, a motor, and a body with a mass relative to the power of the motor. If you break the motor, you find wound raisin insulated copper wire and permanent magnets. There is nothing more so different that you would need to make the first Zimbabwean Solar train. It is our children in 2027 who would improve from where we would have started.

So, just as I would love my wife for perpetuating my mad dreams, I would love a Zimbabwean President who has a mad dream that I can fulfil. I hate a President who would run to Malaysia to buy simply technology at inflated prices before putting money on Zimbabweans to make that same product cheaply. Actually, there is nothing that I know which Zimbabweans can't make. All I know is that we are led by people who believe that getting military and Police backing, means knowing everything. As a result, our leaders but toothpick from China. Even their walking sticks are imported.

I would be first to send my application to any young Zimbabwean President who has a dream. I would never waste time on old leaders who were taught by Colonialism that only a White man knows everything.

As an Industrial Designer, I would strive to turn any Engineering dream which would benefit my country, into an efficiently functioning product. This, I would not do alone, I would build a strong Zimbabwean team of serious Engineers and fire all doubters. Anyone who has ever used the word "it can't", would never be part of my team.