The ManicaPost
ON July 1, 1999, Dr Joshua Nkomo, or Father Zimbabwe as he was affectionately known as, breathed his last after holding the office of Vice President of Zimbabwe for nine years.
While human beings die, their ideas and legacies outlive them.
Therefore exactly 22 years since Dr Nkomo’s demise, Zimbabwe still holds on to his legacy.
Father Zimbabwe fought for a peaceful Zimbabwe and preached peace and unity until his very last day on earth.
All patriotic Zimbabweans do not take for granted the unity that was brokered between ZAPU and ZANU when Dr Nkomo and former President Robert Mugabe signed the Unity Accord on December 22, 1987.
The desire for unity was alive in the revolutionary movements’ understanding of the meaning of collective struggle, thereby bringing the two parties to put all their differences aside and append to an accord that defines Zimbabwe’s peace and unity to this very day.
It took a lot of dedication from every Zimbabwean to achieve the peace that we enjoy today.
Unity, therefore, is a commitment that starts at the individual level before feeding into the respective institutions we serve.
These gains must therefore never be eroded by those who try to sow seeds of hate and distrust amongst the people of Zimbabwe.
Since coming into power in 2019, President Mnangagwa has therefore been calling for national reconciliation, healing and unity.
He has been reiterating that tensions are counter-productive, hence the need to foster inclusive dialogue, promote common understanding, uplift communities and resolve past conflicts.
The President’s efforts in preserving national unity must be applauded. Among many other initiatives, the Political Actors Dialogue (Polad), a platform for political parties that fielded presidential candidates in the 2018 harmonised elections, was launched in 2019 to contribute to Zimbabwe’s social, economic and political progress.
National unity, political stability, peace, law and order, social and economic development can only be achieved to their fullest potential under conditions of peace and the unity as the latter is the bedrock of development.
It is crucial to remember that the pursuit of peace and unity is not a sign of weakness.
Rather, it is a sign of strength and confidence in one’s social, political and even economic standing.
There is no need to fight the next person if we believe in ourselves as a people.
The Zimbabwe we all want can never be built on political bickering, ethnic divisions, gender stereotyping or economic sabotages as all those are all definitions of disunity. Disunity does not serve the interests of Zimbabweans, it serves the interests of our distractors.
To that end, we must always remember that Father Zimbabwe said unity is not just about the signing of documents. He said unity is about what follows after documents are signed.
Therefore now that the Unity Accord was signed, we should jealously guard that unity as our peace as a country depends on it.
But as we preach about national unity and peace, a certain constituency is often overlooked. Our white brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe should never feel marginalised as they are free to make their own contributions in building a better nation.
Dr Nkomo saw the importance of this inclusivity and fought against the separation of people against racial lines.
“We regard people as people, and white people as people like ourselves, with the emphasis on the people, not on the white,” at one time he reassured white people.
As long as there is a shared vision that is premised on sacrificing for the common good, the story of our exertions, aspirations and dreams should bind us together regardless of our race, tribe, political orientation, gender or age.
