WE, in the village, have always believed in the power of our efforts to transform our lives. If we want a school, we will come together to mould bricks to build it. There is a proverb among our people that says: “He who waits for his neighbour’s harvest will go to bed hungry.”
It is a simple saying, but one whose meaning carries the weight of centuries of wisdom. A people who rely on the goodwill of others for their survival will forever be at the mercy of forces beyond their control. They will dance when others beat the drum, they will bend when the wind shifts and they will wake up one day to find that the world has moved forward without them.
And yet, in the corners of our villages, in the corridors of our cities, there is hope that comes in the form of promises. Promises of aid, promises of assistance, promises that if we only wait long enough, someone, somewhere, will come and lift us from our struggles. But promises are like the morning mist, they disappear the moment the sun rises.
If we are to succeed as a people, we must think not just outside the box, but far away from it. The box itself is a prison, a construct that limits imagination, that makes us believe that progress can only be achieved within a narrow set of possibilities. But true success, lasting success, is never found within the comfortable. It is found in the daring, in the bold, in the willingness to forge new paths where none existed before.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the rivers of this land ran with the sweat of men and women who worked not just for themselves, but for the generations to come. They tilled the land, they traded their goods, they built homes from the earth itself. They had little, but they had dignity. They knew that the only wealth that could not be taken away was the wealth they created with their own hands.
But then came a new idea, a new way of thinking. A belief that the road to development lay in the hands of those beyond our borders. That aid, that loans, that goodwill from richer nations would somehow transform our villages into towns and our towns into cities.
And so, we waited.
We waited for money to come, for projects to be approved, for foreign investors to see our worth. And in that waiting, something tragic happened; we forgot how to build for ourselves.
Aid is a seductive thing. It arrives with smiles and handshakes, with grand speeches about partnership and shared progress. But aid is not free. It comes with conditions, with expectations, with the quiet understanding that he who gives also has the power to take away. And so, a people who were once proud and independent become beggars at the tables of others, waiting for scraps instead of harvesting their own fields.
Sustainable development will not come from handouts. It will not come from well-meaning donors or from the carefully worded agreements signed in air-conditioned conference rooms. It will come from the minds and hands of our own people, from our own willingness to step forward and say: We will built this ourselves.
To succeed, we must not only reject dependency, but we must also reject the shallow thinking that keeps us bound to mediocrity. There is a popular story we grew up hearing in the village.
The tortoise, tired of crawling on the ground, admired the eagle that soared high above. One day, he pleaded with the eagle to carry him to the skies. The eagle, amused but kind, agreed and took the tortoise up in his claws. For a moment, the tortoise saw the world as he had never seen it before, the rivers winding through the land, the forests stretching far beyond his imagination. But then the eagle, without warning, let go. And the tortoise, who had never learned how to fly, fell back to the earth, his shell cracking upon impact.
The lesson was clear: if you wish to fly, you must grow wings of your own. If you rely on others to lift you, they will decide when to drop you.
For too long, we have thought in small ways. We have aimed for survival instead of success. We have settled for borrowed knowledge instead of creating our own. We have spent years sending our brightest minds abroad, hoping they will return with answers, instead of realising that the answers have always been within us.
We must think beyond the box. We must stop limiting ourselves to what has already been done and begin imagining what has never been attempted. Our children should not grow up believing that their best chance at success lies in leaving their homeland. They should grow up knowing that the soil beneath their feet is rich with possibility.
There is no shortcut to greatness. The nations we admire did not rise because someone else built them — they rose because their people refused to wait for miracles. They understood that development is not an event, but a process.
We must begin with what we have. Our land is fertile, our people are intelligent, our culture is strong. We must invest in our own industries, in our own businesses, in our own ideas. We must create wealth that is not measured by foreign aid but by local production.
There is nothing shameful about starting small. A farmer who plants one seed has already done more than the man who waits for rain without preparing his fields. A young entrepreneur with a single shop has already built more than the graduate who sits idly, waiting for employment.
The key to success is movement. We must keep moving forward, even if the progress is slow. Because movement, no matter how small, is still movement.
We are descendants of great builders, of warriors who defended their land, of traders who crossed oceans. We are not strangers to hard work.
If we are to succeed, we must make a decision, a decision to stop waiting, to stop begging, to stop thinking that our future lies in the hands of others. We must recognise that our destiny is ours to shape.
And so, let us not think merely outside the box. Let us destroy the box entirely. Let us dream without limits, build without fear, and rise with the confidence of a people who know that their success lies not in what they are given, but in what they create with their own hands.
The world will not wait for us. The question is: Will we wait for the world, or will we stand up and claim our place within it?
– Businessman Tawanda Chenana is also a philanthropist and Secretary for Lands for ZANU PF Mashonaland East Province.
