Mnangagwa explains his nyika inovakwa nevene vayo mantra

Not anymore in mid-1970s as the war intensified, displacing several thousands.

The situation in camps became progressively dire, forcing us to think outside the box.

ZANLA which had been raised and groomed as a fighting machine, had to be recast to morph into a food producing machine for the survival of our struggle.

Nor was scarce food the only challenge.

I have already referred to disease incidence in camps, and how that forced us to develop a strong medical corps in ZANLA.

As the volume of refugees grew, we found ourselves saddled by many kids of school-going age.

We had to evolve a strategy to educate such children.

We started bush schools, powered by curricula developed amidst the struggle.

Cde Dzingai Mutumbuka headed the Education Department, which included cadres like Dr Fay Chung and the late Sister (Dr) Janice McLaughlin.

From this emerged the philosophy of “Education-with-Production”, by which schools were established as centres both of knowledge impartation and food production for our camps.

At Independence, we migrated and infused the same idea into our schools, led by demonstration schools like Mavhudzi and Nkululeko, under the ZIMFEP project.

Sadly, the idea did not take root and soon fizzled out.

All told, it is clear our thinking, our philosophy, nay our ideology in struggle was conceived and broadened in harsh circumstances where we needed to evolve solutions for our survival.

This is key to understanding our thinking and outlook under the Second Republic.

Our long history as Zimbabweans casts and stands us apart as an architectural and agricultural civilisation.

We are a building civilisation, vavaki.

Our forebears raised the iconic, time-defying walls of Great Zimbabwe, and its several siblings strewn across and beyond our territory.

To this day walls from that great age still stand to bear testimony across time and generations.

Because we built cities, our civilisation was not nomadic; it was sedentary.

Above all, it is a civilisation of stone, indeed of hard granite which endures.

Today our nation harkens to that era for inspiration.

Those sprawling stone citadels and settlements needed secure sources of food to support thousands who lived in and around them.

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