A vote to remain masters of our own destiny

Here we reproduce excerpts of President Mnangagwa's speech to Zanu-PF supporters at Nyele Primary School in Bulilima, Matebeleland South province, yesterday.

Salutations

When Jesus was born, the three wise men came from the east. Zanu-PF is a party of wise men.

We are the ones called by Jehovah to fight for the liberation of this country. All of you who are gathered here are the ones who were called by Jehovah to come and meet with the wise men from the east.

So, we have followed God's command, which says those who do good must come from the east.

We have come here to Matebeleland South as our second stop after our first one in Manicaland.

Why have we come here?

We have come here to Matebeleland South, a province that gave our country some of the luminaries of our revolution.

Heroes and heroines such as founding father, Father Zimbabwe, the late national hero and former Vice President Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, Jaison Ziyaphapha Moyo, George Silundika, Naison Khutshwekhaya Ndlovu, Simon Khaya Moyo, Thenjiwe Lesabe, among many other sons and daughters of the revolution who came from this province.

So, we, who are their followers, have to honour their leadership.

But most importantly, why have we chosen July 1 to come here?

It is because it is the 24th anniversary of the passing on of Father Zimbabwe, Chibwechitedza, Hurungudo yeZimbabwe (a towering figure in Zimbabwe).

So, today, first and foremost, we are celebrating the anniversary of Father Zimbabwe's death.

We are not only celebrating through this huge rally, a rally which has never happened in this part of Matebeleland South. You have never had a rally this big.

It is so big because the spirit of our founding father is among us today.

It is over here looking at us and saying the people's party has remembered me. So, we are here to crown the celebration.

Today, we have come here as the leadership of Zanu-PF not only to share our journey of the revolution but to also consolidate, to deepen our comprehensive understanding of the revolution.

The war of liberation in Zimbabwe, a war that was fought by ZANLA and ZIPRA to liberate this country.

We are beneficiaries of that war.

We are here as free people, 43 years after independence.

I want to call on all of you to never forget where we came from and our heritage that we fought for; the right to be our own rulers. Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, Nyika inotongwa nevene vayo, Nyika inotongwa nevene vayo.

Who does this country belong to? It is all of us, right? You have the responsibility of building this country.

You have the burden of carrying forward the vision of our founding fathers — the vision of unity, love and harmony among us.

There is no Manyika, there is no muKorekore, there is no Ndebele; all of us are Zimbabweans.

When we were in Chipinge in the east, there were multitudes of people and among them was this pregnant woman.

The pregnancy was very advanced. She said she would not be left behind because she wanted to hear what we had to say to the people of Manicaland. She wanted to know where we came from, where we are and where we are going. She sat among the people, because that day was so important for her. A miracle happened on that day. She gave birth to a child while she was attending that rally.

Other women quickly covered her. She gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. The woman then said she would christen her baby Emmerson Nyika. When I was briefed about that incident, I then said I was going to pay for that child's education until he finishes his university education.

I said all of that child's needs would be catered for by Zanu-PF.

I had not told this story to Mai Muchinguri, because she will be responsible for all the child's needs and the mother's needs and also the father.

Well done, well done, Matebeleland South Province, for demonstrating that you support your party.

This is a vivid demonstration to our detractors. You in Europe, come and see how Zanu-PF is loved by its people. If you close your eyes, our noise and sound, our movement and our walking, our dreams will wake you up.

You wish us to be divided. No! No! No! We shall never be divided. You can send your money, giving groups and groups in this country to bring about confusion and division.

We, the people of Zimbabwe, say No! No! We shall remain united.

We shall remain united during night, and during day; in winter and in summer. Together with all our chiefs across the board, from Zambezi to Limpopo, from Mutare to Plumtree, we are united.

We shall march forward, building our country, Zimbabwe, together. Every country is built by its own people.

Those who think our country will be developed by the white man are lost.

You heard the Vice President saying we want five million votes, now ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) is saying we have six million people on the voters' roll.

You also heard the commissar saying the party has already won 92 council seats uncontested.

To all the journalists who are here, representing their white masters, go back and tell them that Zanu-PF is unstoppable. No one can stop us.

We bring peace, we brought peace, we shall maintain peace. No one can teach us democracy, because we, ourselves, fought for that democracy.

The countries in Europe should come to Zimbabwe to learn about democracy because we realise that under oppression, under colonialism, there was no democracy and those same countries were saying they are democratic. No! No! No!

We are democrats and we are masters of democracy, so don't be cheated and don't be misled.

We brought freedom, which they did not want us to have and we had to fight for that and we defeated them and became independent.

We must vote Zanu-PF to defend our independence, our freedom, our sovereignty and make sure we defeat the pretenders, the detractors, the retrogressive elements among us.

It is a vote for accelerated development. It is a vote to remain masters of our own destiny, a vote for peace and a vote for harmony.

There is no other political party that gave indigenous people their inheritance.

Throughout our campaign — whether at ward level, district level, provincial level — I want to tell our candidates to preach peace, unity, harmony and love.

All of us, when we began this rally, we sang the national anthem. It is the same national anthem we sang in Chipinge and next Saturday we will be in Karoi and we will sing the national anthem.

Our flag which is flying here, this flag here, was raised by Chief Mazungunye.

At that time, Chief Mazungunye was a police officer.

We had Prince Charles, who is now King Charles III, in attendance who was sent to attend our independence by the Queen to receive the Union Jack after we had defeated the British.

We gave him that flag.

VaMugabe gave our flag to Chief Mazungunye, who was a police officer, to hoist it up, the independence flag, which is flying up to today.

Generation after generation must pass on the philosophy that we are a new-born nation that is free from foreign colonialism.

Never again shall Zimbabwe become a colony. Under our watch, with my generals who are here, it will never happen.

I don't know with the younger generation which will come. If ever you allow the white man to come back, we will arise from our graves and destroy you.

So, we want you all to learn that it is important, every five years, elections come and go, but we shall remain ourselves, united under one national flag, one national anthem. From Zambezi to Limpopo to Beitbridge, we are one people; we are Zimbabweans; from generation to generation.

Now, on our economy, I want you to know this. The Japanese were responsible for building their own country. No one here helped them to do so. When the Germans were building their country, none among us was there.

When they built America and Britain, nobody here was there.

Why is it that when we want to build our own country we have some among us who want the Japanese, the Germans or people from France to come and help us?

Down with those who have that mindset.

We must build as Zimbabweans at our own pace, with our own resources.

Every country is built on the basis of science and technology and that is why all our universities have a bias towards science and technology.

And this is why we are building secondary schools and this is why when your chairman Mangaliso Ndlovu came to me and he said "Mudhara we need a technical college"; we are now going to build that polytech because polytechs teach people skills; how to build a house; how to do metal fabrication, woodwork, electrical engineering and ICT.

Those skills are needed to build our country.

Under the Second Republic, we shall make sure every single province shall have universities; shall have technical colleges; primary and secondary schools and all of them shall have a bias towards science and technology, mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

This is how we build our own country. When we went to war, our major grievance was the land.

Our land had been taken away from us, the people of Zimbabwe. It had been taken by colonisers.

So, we went to war and removed the colonisers. Now our land is with us and our land is now connected to us. The colonisers were not happy.

I always say, how foolish is it that we Zimbabweans never get angry when Germans are giving each other land. We don't get angry when Australians are sharing their land or when the British are sharing their land in England?

But these foolish people get angry when we are sharing our land in Zimbabwe. That is foolish.

They get angry and sanction us when we share our own land. We say down with them.

However, when they imposed those sanctions, the objective was for our economy to collapse; the objective was for the people of Zimbabwe to rise up against the Zanu-PF Government.

That way, they would then impose their puppets, giving them a chance to return and strip this country of all its resources.

Here Matebeleland South province is very rich in minerals. They want to mine our minerals and give only crumbs.

We are the ones who are eating at the table. So, the first thing we did was to make sure that we are food-secure in Zimbabwe. We don't need to import food from other countries.

We have five ecological regions in the country. The first, second and third regions receive good rainfall. The fourth and fifth regions do not receive much rain but they are good for livestock farming.

Under the Second Republic, we sat down and made sure we have food security in our country.

First, we introduced Pfumvudza/Intwasa. This model of agriculture makes sure that there is food at the household level. If every household follows this initiative, they will be food-secure.

We give all these people free inputs under Intwasa. For small-scale farmers, we give them soft loans.

Then those with big farms, we facilitate for them. We entered into an agreement with Belarus, our friends, and we got tractors and combine harvesters, a lot of machines.

Everyone with a big farm can go and buy those tractors and pay for them in three years. We are now in the fourth year of food security in the country. We are building dams; we have irrigation schemes throughout the country.

In this province, we installed a lot of irrigation equipment. In fact, our first village horticulture scheme was here.

We have 35 000 villages in Zimbabwe. We said we need 35 000 schemes, which we are now converting into companies.

The first one was established in Mangwe and it is doing well. Every province has now such a scheme, where we put solar boreholes which will help women do horticulture.

We have a borehole drilling programme for every village.

We bought 80 modern rigs for boreholes. I have come with my team from the Ministry of Lands (Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development). Whenever I move around the country addressing these rallies, I want to see my team drilling boreholes. We have already drilled boreholes here in Bulilima.

Out of five chiefs, four of them now have solar boreholes. For the fifth chief, we could not manage to get the water source after trying two drilling points, but the rig will not go anywhere until we get to the water source. This is what the Second Republic does.

We were told by Chibwe Chitedza (Dr Joshua Nkomo) that lima mali, mali, lima all the wealth is in the soil. This is what we were taught by our Father Zimbabwe.

We are now moving on to the mining sector. Matebeleland South province is rich in minerals. Under Zanu-PF, we will continue to benefit our local economies, and the economy as a whole.

There is a group of young men who are here. When they heard that I was coming here, they came to Harare and donated 30 000 litres of diesel. I asked where they come from, and they said they come from Gwanda. They said they are into mining. They said the donation was to show how happy they are with the opportunity that has been presented to them to acquire mines.

So, I am very proud of our young people in Matebeleland South, they support their party. They heard we are coming here and they said, under the Second Republic, we are doing well and to show that we are doing well Mr President, here is the 30 000 litres of diesel. I am proud of the young men. I asked them to continue doing their good works whilst also protecting the environment and avoid leaving open pits where our cattle can fall into.

In terms of infrastructure development, your provincial chairperson Mangaliso Ndlovu said the province is lagging behind in terms of roads, especially the Plumtree to Tsholotsho road and the road to Lupane. I asked VP Chiwenga for his views on this and he said there is already a plan to rehabilitate the Plumtree to Tsholothso road. So, we will make sure that we tar the road from Plumtree to Tsholotsho/Lupane.

On irrigation, here in Mat South, we have several dams. I don't know most of them by name, but I know that there are several dams, either completed, or under construction. But its not only Mat South, in every province, we are making sure we create dams, for two reasons, because of climate change and because we want food security. When we do irrigation, it doesn't matter whether the rains are good or bad, you will get your food.

In Mat North, there is the Gwayi-Shangani Lake, first mooted in 1912, when the bulk of us were not yet born. Since 1912, there was talk of building it, there were several promises that were made to build it, but nothing happened.

But when the Second Republic came and heard that there is Gwayi-Shangani River, which will benefit Bulawayo, we have begun building it. When we finish Gwayi-Shangani, water problems in Bulawayo will be gone forever. And from Gwayi-Shangani to Bulawayo, we shall create 10 000 hectares of irrigable land. For people from Lupane, Binga, right through to Bulawayo, there will be places where we will divert water from the main pipe to give villagers. This is the Second Republic's philosophy, to look after our people.

We move on to tourism. We have many places in Matebeleland South that are historic. We have this place where Rhodes is sleeping, Matopos. At one time, when we became independent, the late Josiah Tungamirai and the late General Mujuru came to me and said they wanted to destroy Cecil John Rhodes' grave.

I asked them why do such a thing and they said it is because he was a colonialist. They said: "We are ready to do it and we decided not to inform (then Prime Minister) Robert Mugabe because we know that he will be against it, so we have decided to tell you, instead."

I then told them to wait for a moment, and I went to Mugabe to tell him about their plans. He dismissed the idea and told me to stop them immediately.

There is going to come a time when we are going to reclaim skulls of our First Chimurenga heroes like Mbuya Nehanda, which are in British museums, while those from Britain will also come and collect remains of their people.

The plan to return the remains of our heroes is now in motion, but they have not requested Rhodes' remains. If they don't ask for his remains, we will just hand them over, but if they don't want, we will see what to do.

That is our history. They took the remains of our heroes into their museums in England, we want those back home here in Zimbabwe.

We have a system of devolution. In the past everything was done in Harare. We made decisions in Harare, in Cabinet, for every district, for every province, for every ward. Then, we realised that we in Harare cannot know the pressing needs for each community. So, we decided to introduce devolution funds which are then sent to the communities.

Since 2020, we have sent $16 billion to Mat South for you to deal with small community needs. We shall continue to increase devolution funds.

We are being attacked, currently, due to sky-rocketing prices. Why? Just when we announced that we were going for general elections, our enemies decided that they cause problems amongst our people, and prices started going up at companies such as Innscor.

I have been told today that some Indians in Harare are stocking basic goods in warehouses. They buy a lot of sugar from Chiredzi, all the basic goods like flour and so on and they stock in their warehouses to raise prices.

Let me warn them. I have my people investigating these warehouses and if it is true, we shall confiscate not only the warehouses, but also the things inside and give to you.

If they want to hoard, ngavadzokere vanoita hoard kunyika dzekwavo (they should go back to their countries to engage in such shenanigans), not in Zimbabwe. Our Government will never, never tolerate such activities in independent Zimbabwe.

The people of Mat South, surely, I must mention how happy myself and my team are. We did not expect to see such a huge gathering. You have surprised us and it's so beautiful. We are united. I want to show you that we keep our history and I want to show you Robert Mugabe Junior, who is here and ED Junior, who is here. You two come and stand here.

We continue to respect the past. Robert Mugabe Jnr and ED Junior are showing that we are keeping intact. You can now sit down, you two. People think that we are not united. We are totally, totally united. We shall move together. This is the spirit, even when we are gone.

Those who come after us must respect leaders of revolution. I have mentioned here when I began that the majority of revolutionaries who began the struggle for independence came from Matebeleland South, from the ANC, NDP, ZANU then ZAPU.

I have mentioned names liked Ubaba Nkomo JZ Moyo . . . they are all gone but we must remember their sacrifice for this day, that is why we are here.

The likes of Cdes Chitepo, Muzenda, Tongogara, Mangena. They are gone so we must defend what they died for by voting. When they were in the armed struggle, people died, people were wounded, people were killed by snakes and wild animals in the bush, people died from hunger.

But I am aware we must also praise mothers and fathers in the villages who looked after us, who gave us shelter and food as guerrillas and we survived. But today to keep that promise, to keep that independence, we must vote for that party that brought independence to this country and what is that party? It is Zanu-PF.

When we vote, I see here, it's written Vote Team Zanu-PF, which means the President, MP and the councillor like what they do in heaven.

Team Zimbabwe, President, MP and councillor, God is happy when He sees His people doing what they do in heaven. Who has ever sweated to vote?

It's just putting an X and you go home.

To women, please don't prepare food for husbands who would have not voted. I want to thank you all for coming here. We want to thank you for supporting the party, I want to thank you for showing discipline.

I want to thank you for being united. Let me assure you through your own structures, they will discover what you need the most. Then the structures of Local Government from Minister July Moyo from the ward up to the national level, we get to know what you need, and we will do everything possible to support you.

To build institutions, to make sure you have clean water in every village, the programme is already on.

I will ask my officials to come and tell you what we have brought for you. When they are done, I will wrap up this programme.