Address to Young Zimbabweans: The Post-Independence Generation

Young people of Zimbabwe, I say to you all that the baton is now being passed on to us, let us not shrink from the responsibility. Let us gladly seize it and build a great future for us and our children.  Failure to do so now would mean we have failed future generations, and that would be an unforgivable betrayal.

Now is the time to stand up united in our diversity and defend the cause of justice, equality, freedom, human liberty, self-government and self-determination.

We can no longer embrace the worn out ideas of some of our fathers who believe in tribal domination and subjugation. Now is the time for us to accept that in a new Zimbabwe, we are all equal, and Zimbabwe belongs to us all who live in it. No one of us has a better share or more legitimate claim to the country than the other.

Let us summon that spirit of our forefathers who sweated and died in the fight for the liberation of this great country, who died together as Bakalanga, Vakaranga, amaNdebele, Manyika, BaTonga and Vhavenda. Let us summon that courage which saw them surmount some of the greatest challenges that any human race could face and overcome our differences and the petty grievances that some of our fathers have used to destroy this country for which our fathers and mothers died.

Let us rally around those of the older generation whose thinking is progressive and has moved into the twenty-first century and leave behind those who are still in the twentieth century. Young people of Zimbabwe, now is not the time to fear. Now is the time to say to one another, the only thing that we have to fear is fear itself, as was boldly declared by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when his nation was mired in the throes of a crippling economic crisis and faced with a doomsday scenario, World War II.

Let us not forget the words of young John F. Kennedy - we must never negotiate out of fear, but we must never fear to negotiate. Let us negotiate and settle whatever differences we have than dismiss them as irrelevant or fight one another.

 Never has the hour been so urgent. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us of the fierce urgency of now. We can no longer take the tranquilizing pills of gradualism and expect our country to go back to business as usual as long as the forces of tyranny, tribal subjugation and domination, corruption and oppression are still in place. Change for justice, freedom, equality and fairness has to come and it has to come now.

 Zimbabwe, it will not be easy, but the choice is between total destruction and taking bold, united non-violent and focused action to rebuild our nation. The responsibility lies with us, especially the younger generation.

 Young people, we can no longer afford political apathy. Neither can we afford any longer to be used by elderly career politicians to beat up one another in pursuit of their interests which are not always in line with our own. That will not bring us jobs, education for us and our children; rebuild our schools and clinics, our dip tanks and dams, our roads and libraries. Young people of the 70s and 80s generation, yes, some of our parents were cowed by the guns of the Rhodesian Front and Gukurahundi, but not us.

Now is the time to say no to all systems of injustice, inequality, and discrimination in the land of our forefathers. Now is the time to actively participate in civic and public affairs and politics in general. Now is the time to read and sharpen our skills.

Now is the time to run for political office and bring in the change that we want to see. Gone are the days when politics was a career. For this generation let politics be the means to bring positive change and achieve certain specific goals in the public self-interest in a specified time. 

 Yes, young people of Zimbabwe, now is the time to stand together, struggle together and support one another even to the bitter end. Now is the time to embrace a greater vision larger than the partisan bickering of the failed politics that have characterized our country for the last 30 years. Now is the time to rally behind the building of our country as an Ethnolinguistic Federal Republic and obtain our freedom from all forms of Imperialism and the resultant discrimination.

 Let us all rise and have a dream as the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. cried. Let us remember that sometimes the ideals for that we want to reach for are worth living and dying for, as would have said young Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela at the Rivonia Trial.

Sometimes they will require blood, sweat and tears, as Winston Churchill pronounced before the House of Commons. Faced with sweltering racial injustice, Lyndon B. Johnson cried before the US Congress, “we shall overcome”.

Perhaps, young people of Zimbabwe, sometimes it will require that some among us give the full measure of devotion to the cause of freedom as Abraham Lincoln noticed in Gettysburg that that’s what it takes at times to defend freedom and achieve justice and human equality. When America was facing rapture over the slavery question, Lincoln reminded them that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Young people of Zimbabwe, we need to stand together, and in the words of Dr Joshua Nkomo, let us refuse to accept that we cannot do better than what has been done so far, and let us not reach for easy excuses for our failure to take responsibility and shape our destiny.

Yes, I know it will not be easy. The entrenched interests of those opposed to freedom will be arrayed against us. But we need to soldier on, and soldier on we shall, and by soldiering on we shall overcome whatever the cost.

Young people of Zimbabwe, such is my call and challenge to you in this Year 2012. This is not a call to reflection, but a call to action. Think of where we should be by year 2050, and by 2100, and what part you will play, or will have played. In the words of John F. Kennedy, ask not what Zimbabwe can do for you, but what you can do for Zimbabwe!

Vhavenda, Bakalanga, Vakaranga, BaNambya, Babirwa, BaPfumbi, BaTonga, Manyika, Mazezuru, I invite you to join in this struggle and rebuild our Great Nation - proud and united in its diversity. And as the men of Israel sat by the rivers of Babylon weeping in remembrance of Zion, so shall I always remember Bukalanga, and so shall I always remember Zimbabwe, and for these shall I always struggle. Let us stand together in this struggle for the cause of freedom, justice, equality, fairness, self-government and self-determination.

Let us remind our enemies who stand opposed to these values that whether they wish us well or they wish us ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty, as cried out John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Thank you very much my fellow Zimbabweans. God bless you. And may God bless what I trust will turn out to be the Federal Republic of Zimbabwe within our lifetime. In closing I say to you all in Khoisan:

 

!ke e: /xarra //ke - Diverse People Unite