WE are in the month where the voice to remove illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe is amplified.

Zimbabwe is a country steadily and successfully getting out of the crisis that was created by the West which wants to own and control its resources.

The crisis was internationalised so that the country would be isolated. 

Illegal sanctions were imposed by Western countries to weaken and remove ZANU PF, the vanguard of the liberation struggle, from power.

We are under threat from the West and its allies that are vehemently opposed to the empowerment programmes that seek to better the lot of the majority.

We are under siege for we can show the rest of Africa that it can be done; that indigenes can successfully run their affairs without the West.

ZIMBABWE is a paradise regained.  It had been lost to the British during colonialism. 

They talked to us pretending they wanted to be our friends. 

They insisted they were children of God and lived with God. 

They claimed they had come to make us also children of God and would take us to heaven with them to live with God.  

They said the highways in Heaven were paved with gold, glittering with diamonds and flowing with milk and honey where whites swim together with angels as children of God. 

They said they would help us join them to swim and become washed from black to white and also become children of God. We believed them and allowed them to mine our gold and diamonds to go and build cities and highways in Europe as an image of heaven for us on earth. 

And we sang with joy saying: “Oh Lord, wash me and make me whiter than snow.” 

In reality these infidels inflicted immeasurable damage on our identity and pride as Africans. 

Now we love to be white and to be loved by whites. 

We love to identify with whites and to be identified as whites — by any means necessary, at any cost. 

We no longer carry the whiteman on our backs, but in our heads, hearts and names.

The white imperialist is not dead. 

The Rhodesian never dies. 

He is alive and well. 

He lives in some of us and is retarding our growth. 

Colonialism robbed Zimbabweans of their land and economy. It took away their civil liberties and rights.

It denied them a stake in their economy, freedom of association and expression.

Imperialists exploited and expropriated.

The journey that we have walked thus far from independence should be defined by the success of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme and the ongoing economic empowerment programmes.

African countries should intensify the fight for economic independence and redeem themselves from being economic puppets and perpetual beggars gallivanting from one metropol to another telling the same old story of poverty.

Thus empowerment and the restoration of these rights is a fundamental goal in the development of African lives.

We remain dominated economically by economic lords as we were politically dominated by political lords yesterday.

Economic domination is, indeed, a worse phenomenon than political domination.

This is because in the latter case, no political resources are depleted by being shipped abroad, whereas in a situation of economic domination our resources are day-by-day freighted to Paris, London and New York both as lowly purchased raw materials such as chrome and copper.

Zimbabwe, in the Second Republic, is on the right path and should press ahead making no apologies.