Early written records, notably from Portuguese traders, confirmed us as heirs to a highly diversified agricultural civilisation which tilled the land and produced grains of all manner.
We lived off the land, thus becoming vana vevhu, sons and daughters of the soil.
As we struggled for our Independence, vana vevhu became a powerful organising mantra.
The land was our principal grievance because the land is our identity, indeed is us.
This bonding with the land comes at birth when the umbilical cord of the newly born is committed to our sacred earth.
Bona fide Zimbabweans belong to the land whose elements create the matter with which we build and rebuild; on which we grow that which gives succour to life; indeed, from which we dig the precious minerals that we trade.
Much later, in the 19th Century, the Ndebele Kingdom upheld the same tradition of huge settlements.
At its demise in 1893 under King Lobengula, the Ndebele State left a huge national herd and an elaborate network of underground silos full of grain to cater for lean years.
That food security system was pillaged and dismantled by the conquering British imperial army, as records clearly show.
It even created loot committees for the purpose.
Contrary to colonial stereotypes, we are a prudential Civilisation which provides for lean years.
National Food Security has always been a preoccupation of our leaders and the polities which they govern.
After conquest, Rhodesian settlers realised there was no Second Rand.
They turned to farming much later.
Before they did, right up to the late 1920s, they lived off African agricultural produce, African agricultural surplus.
Early white grain merchants who dominated grain trade soon after colonisation extracted this huge African grain surplus to meet grain requirements at mines in Witwatersrand, South Africa.
We have always been a serious grain producer in the region, indeed a solution to perennial grain deficits in our region.
Colonial white farmers feared competition from our forebears.
They used the law to create monopolies in agriculture which gave them a head start.
Several pieces of legislation on land apportionment, and on marketing gave them a head-start, while attacking our agricultural production base.
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