Let us build the Zim, Africa we want

AFRICA Day is celebrated every year on May 25. The celebrations commemorate the founding Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU). The day is intended to celebrate and acknowledge the African solidarity, unity in diversity, creativity and successes while looking at how best we can tackle our challenges.

This year’s theme is Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa We Want. This AU theme for 2021 presents a unique opportunity for the continent to celebrate its great Pan-Africanists who have played and are still playing a key role in African renaissance and rebirth.

Indeed, some of these greats were murdered for standing unwaveringly for the African cause and were replaced by puppets, a trend that has continued to bog Africa’s political and socio-economic development.

The AU was relaunched from the OAU in July 2002 in Durban, South Africa, following the September 1999 recommendation. The decision to relaunch this Pan-African organisation was the outcome of consensus by African leaders that in order to realise Africa’s potential, there was need to refocus attention from the fight for decolonisation and ridding the continent of apartheid, which had been the primary focus of the OAU, to increased co-operation and integration of African States to drive African growth and economic development. The new vehicle — AU — is guided by its vision of “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force on the global arena”.

As we celebrate this year’s Africa Day, we need to take note and appreciate the major goals of the AU. These are:

1) To promote the unity and solidarity of the African continent,

2) To co-ordinate and intensify their co-operation and effort to achieve a better life for the people of Africa,

3) To defend sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of the Africans,

4) To eradicate all forms of colonialism in Africa, and

5) To promote international cooperation, having due regards to the charter of the UN and the universal declaration of human rights.

To ensure the realisation of its objectives and the attainment of the Pan-African vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa.

Agenda 2063 was developed as a strategic framework for Africa’s long term socio-economic and integraDESPITE tive transformation.

The Agenda 2063 blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into a global powerhouse of the future is a strategic framework for delivering on Africa’s goal for inclusive and sustainable manifestation of the Pan-African drive and ideals.

The agenda 2063 encapsulates not only Africa’s aspiration for the future, but also identifies key flagship programmes which can boost Africa’s economic growth and development and lead to the rapid transformation of the continent.

To ensure that Agenda 2063 delivers both quantitative and qualitative transformational outcomes for the African people, the AU identified key activities to be undertaken in its 10-year implementation plan.

Likewise, here at home in Zimbabwe, Agenda/Vision 2030 was launched by government to ensure a middle-class income status by 2030. This is operationalised through a five-year blueprint that is targeting an economic growth rate of 5% per annum to catapult the country into an upper-middle income economy by 2030. Dubbed the National Development Strategy 1 [NDS 1], the plan runs from 2021 to 2025.

Just as Agenda 2063 calls for greater collaboration and support for African-led initiatives to ensure the attainment of the aspirations of the African people, Zimbabwe agenda/vision 2030 equally calls for greater collaboration and support for Zimbabwean-led initiative to ensure the attainment of the aspirations of the Zimbabwean people.

As we celebrated Africa Day and hero worship our Pan-Africanist architects, we need to reflect and take stock of the successes and failures in light of the character of the environment we are operating in as Africa to achieve the desired agenda — the Africa we all want. The same is true of the Zimbabwean scenario. What are the success and failure stories as we move towards the Zimbabwe we all want — vision 2030?

Could it have been a wrong assumption by our torch-bearers, the AU founding fathers, that the fight against colonialism and apartheid was done and that the environment was now conducive for them to refocus the continental arsenal towards economic growth and development like any other global region?

The question then is whether or not it was premature to do so or not? Is it not true that the challenges Africa is facing today are more of a political nature, underpinned by a history of colonisation, than the social, economic and any other factors one might think of?

Is it not the politically tinted economic sanctions, saboteurs fighting from within our systems and institutions, the uneven global political playing field which are our greatest challenge as Africa?

Furthermore, as we celebrated our Africa Day, we also need to take stock of our contributions as individuals and as an African people, as a Zimbabwean people as vividly pronounced by the visionary guidance of the AU — “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena”.

Are we as African people, as Zimbabweans, playing our part? Africa/ Zimbabwe will not realise its objectives if Africans/Zimbabweans as a people fail to take centre stage for the Africa/Zimbabwe we envisage. Are we not victims of the former colonial master’s machinations of manipulating and discrediting African institutions and leadership for the benefit of the former colonial master’s objectives of plundering Africa’s diverse and rich resources? Are we as a people standing in defence of our revolutionary movements? These questions need to be answered as we celebrate Africa Day.

Thus, this year’s theme, should take us further as an African people with a strong cultural, identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics. Let our Arts, Culture and Heritage be levers for our thrust to building the Africa we all want. Aluta continua!

Sam Parerenyatwa Mashonaland Central war veterans chairman