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TODAY all roads lead to Murambinda, Buhera District in Manicaland Province which is playing host to this year’s National Independence Day celebrations. 

The celebrations which will be at Murambinda A Primary School and Murambinda B Secondary School, are being held under the theme “Zim@44: Unity, Peace and Development Towards Vision 2030”. Thousands of Zimbabweans from across the country are therefore expected to throng Murambinda for the national Uhuru celebrations. 

The national celebrations are being held outside the capital, Harare for the third year running since Government adopted a system of rotating the hosting of the Uhuru celebrations. 

Last year the national celebrations were hosted by Mt Darwin in Mashonaland Central Province. It is our hope that as citizens converge for the Uhuru celebrations at the different venues across the country, they will take the opportunity to reflect on the country’s achievements since 1980 when the country was freed from the yoke of colonialism. 

Citizens that are not able to travel to Murambinda for the main celebrations are expected to attend their respective district or provincial celebrations. 

The country’s gallant sons and daughters sacrificed their lives to liberate the country and they should be smiling in their graves after Government successfully implemented the land reform programme. 

More than 300 000 families are now owners of land in areas that include what used to be a preserve of the white commercial farmers. Most Zimbabweans before independence were confined to barren land while white commercial farmers occupied prime farming areas in different parts of the country. 

The skewed land ownership was one of the major grievances that drove Zimbabweans to take up arms to fight the settler regime. 

In his address at the Independence Day celebrations in Mt Darwin last year, President Mnangagwa said apart from addressing the skewed land ownership, the Second Republic had since 2018 completed more than 7 000 high impact life-changing projects across the country.  

Government has constructed roads, dams and other such infrastructure as it works to modernise every part of the country in order to transform the people’s livelihoods. The challenge therefore is to sustain this development momentum and this calls for each and every citizen to put shoulder to the wheel. What is encouraging is that most of the development projects are being implemented by local companies, a confirmation that the country has the required skilled manpower. 

The country is however under siege from both internal and external detractors that are peddling falsehoods to destabilise the peace and tranquillity that citizens are enjoying. 

Today we should therefore come in our numbers at the different Uhuru celebration venues to shame our detractors that want to divide us. It is only us who can build the Zimbabwe we all want and to achieve this we should have a shared vision as a people. Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo/Ilizwe Lakhiwa Ngabaninilo.