Mr. President, our women and our youths – our women must be given their rightful place in society. Women are equal. They were there in the First Chimurenga. You were with them in the Second Chimurenga. They fought side by side with men; they must have equal rights. We also say it is not right to say the youths are the leaders of tomorrow. The youths are leaders of today. They must have places in Parliament, they must be there in the Cabinet, they must be there in business and everywhere because it is their country and they cannot wait for tomorrow because tomorrow may never come.
Mr. President, lastly we support the compensation for expropriated land that the Government is trying to do. However, this compensation is targeting former white farmers. It is saying very little about black farmers who lost their land. The locus classicus or the biggest example is Ndabaningi Sithole. He lost his investment, his Churu Farm as a result of fighting nationalistic grudges that were at play. Politics was at play. A black person lost his farm. They have to be compensated and they have to be given priority as well, so there must be derationalisation of compensation and not only that, thousands of black farm workers lost their jobs as a result of land reform, everybody knows that. They are not being compensated. They owned nothing except their labour power. When the programme came, they lost their jobs. Nobody is talking about compensating them. We call on this Government to compensate the black farm workers who lost their jobs. I am aware that there could be white farm workers as well. They ought to be compensated – the workers have to be compensated.
Mr. President, after everything is said and done, our pensions were eroded by inflation. So there is no social security in Zimbabwe. There is no social protection to talk about in Zimbabwe. These are some of the things that serious men and women in this country must sit down and talk about. I thank you.
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