President restores hope in Kwekwe
PRESIDENT Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa of ZANU PF, the party of the revolution, yesterday headlined a major rally in Kwekwe, the major heavy industry heartland of Zimbabwe.
Kwekwe of all towns has all the reason to hope for economic revival and growth under the new dispensation of the Second Republic.
Since 2000, the Midlands town has gone through a lot of turmoil and travail.
It was a particular target of the pincer grip of sanctions by the West and wilful de-industrialisation through G40-Gamatox internal fifth columnists.
The last aspect arose from the fact that it is the hometown of a marked political figure in Comrade Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa.The post-imperial detractors and their local lackeys zeroed in on the strategic role the heavy metallurgical industry of Kwekwe discharged to the whole nation as an anchor pillar. They systematically decided to run down and shatter the iron and steel, the ferrochrome and the gold refining sinews of the town.
In no time, the giant furnaces that were a hallmark of Kwekwe ceased bellowing smoke.
The collateral damage to the nation reached catastrophic levels.
The national railway system collapsed as heavy loads disappeared. So did the balance sheet to fund maintenance and expansion.
There is one project which is most emblematic of this industrial disaster.
The newly commissioned Dabuka-Harare electric railway line was left to decay.
Copper metal mongers descended upon it, pulling down cables. Unrestrained smuggling carted the thieved cables to foundries in South Africa and further afield to China.
Smaller quantities were converted to household ornamental artefacts.
The German-supplied electric locomotives are hulking and rusting carcasses by the Dabuka siding. The wilful aspect of this intentional sabotage is borne out by the sanguine blindness of the Mugabeist G40-Gamatox Cabinet to this unfolding mayhem.
One can pore through pertinent Cabinet minutes. Not once was this matter ever raised or debated.
The rustic mindset of the Cabinet Ministers never bated an eye even as their Finance Ministers remitted funds to service the debt behind this deliberately abandoned national project.
At its peak glory of economic activity, Kwekwe housed Zisco integrated steelworks in Redcliff, the Zimasco ferrochrome furnaces, the legendary and perennial gold ores of the famed Globe and Phoenix Mine.
There was also the roasting plant that processed refractory gold ores from all over the Central African heartland.
Kwekwe was President Mnangagwa’s original Parliamentary constituency.
Yesterday’s rally is the President’s second foray into the urban centres.
This follows the resounding Epworth rally in Harare. President Mnangagwa is out on the campaign trail, stumping for the urban vote as March 26, 2022 looms on the horizon.
This is the day the Covid-19 pandemic long-delayed by-elections are all lumped together so the electorate can exercise its democratic choice. The day has been dubbed a mini national election. Indeed, it may serve as a dress rehearsal of the upcoming national Harmonised Elections slated for 2023. The Kwekwe rally also has another potent. It is being firmly placed on the agenda of urban renewal by President Mnangagwa and ZANU PF, the ruling party, and the tempered custodian of the Zimbabwe Revolution.
For more than a decade, a compromised opposition has held sway with the urban voter. This was a reaction to the 2002 ZDERA economic sanctions of the United States Congress and mirror punitive economic measures by the European Union. This was a diabolical counter punch to the move by the heroic people of Zimbabwe in restitution of their colonially dispossessed land. The urban population bore the immediate brunt of an umbilical cord severed from the global economy by the still preponderantly dominant West.
The ensuing dislocation swung the urban vote to the opposition MDC courtesy of the severe economic pain and deprivation.
The post-Soviet triumphalist West marshalled a veritable arsenal of weaponry to run down Kwekwe. The intention was to neutralise and knock out its prominent son Cde Emmerson D. Mnangagwa as a political player of national stature. The multi-pronged attack centred on the imposition of economic sanctions. Within Zimbabwe, their spies were busy cobbling together an opposition MDC political outfit. The camouflage was the trade union movement whose membership was being incensed by job dismissals as the heavy industry shuttered.
Blessing Chebundo rose to political prominence on this trade union ticket.
The Western spies were not yet done.
They infiltrated the ruling party. There was the gerrymandering of constituencies so as to ensure a two-time electoral defeat of the marked candidate.
Lastly, there was diabolic corporate politicking. The Government relinquished its sole shareholder role in Zisco.
Newly acquired steel blast furnaces from China were closed down.
Private investors in the ferrochrome sector were not spared either.
They were also arm-twisted to closure of an industry that had attracted global giants like Union Carbide. Here is a classic case of one cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face.
All this politico-industrial skulduggery against Kwekwe centred on one singular goal.
The quarry was none other than Comrade Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa.
On reading the tea leaves, he deftly shifted to the assured safety of a rural Chirumhanzu-Zibagwe. By dint of that move, he escaped the squeeze of the political boa-constrictor.
He bought himself the electoral insurance to fight another day.
So much is going for Kwekwe as the Second Republic focuses on the reversal of the wilful decay championed in the final two decades of the First Republic.
Yesterday’s rally was there to restore hope to long-time beleaguered Kwekwe residents.
The heavy industry fortunes of the region are in full swing back to glorious production.
There is also the announced local Kuvimba partners to bring back Zisco.
A refractory gold refinery is being built on the outskirts of the town by Chinese investors as they expand their antimony metal operation. Nearby, the Mvuma-Chivhu-Manhize steel plant is steadily going up.
It is targeting an initial 1,2 million tonnes of production. More ferrochrome smelters are on the investment drawing board for the benefit of this mineral-rich Great Dyke town.
There are also agro-industrial initiatives such as the scientific Pfumvudza to win the hearts of crops like sunflower, cotton and cereals. Seasons turn in the tide of human times. The Kwekwe rally had all the bearings of the prosperity agenda championed by President Mnangagwa as he stewards his ZANU PF party of the Zimbabwe revolution.
The mantra “Zimbabwe Is Open for Business” is homing upon Kwekwe in a big and pleasant manner.
His Excellency has gifted title deeds for the existing stock of houses as the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency (ZINGSA) of the Ministry of Higher Education uses satellite and drones to map settlements. Harare South and New Caledonia done.
President Mnangagwa has exercised Executive Powers on urban roads under the Emergency Roads Rehabilitation Programme 2.
Kunzvi and Mtshabezi dams will provide running water to replace dirty wells and cholera-prone faeces-filled streams, and removal of stinking mountains of uncollected garbage.
The Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) is driving domestic and foreign direct investment to revive factories and create jobs.
His Excellency is on a sustained spree of ribbon cutting of new firms as he breathes new life to cities and towns.
They are reviving the core role of urbanisation: producing quality goods for the local and discerning global marketplace.
A single-minded pursuit of the State House power led MDC-CCC to sidestep, neglect and completely abandon urban centres.
They were turned into sprawling cesspools of ineptitude sustained by festering corruption of city fathers. Their preoccupation was rapacious avarice as they divided every piece of land into haphazard allocations.