Mnangagwa says we should never waste a good crisis

We develop our country using God-given resources. Looking at mineral resources we have discovered and are exploiting since the Second Republic, there is no doubt our nation enjoys divine favour. From a paltry US$2,5 billion turnover in mining before this New Dispensation, our mining sector is peeping the US$20 billion-mark, in the five short years we have subsisted as the Second Republic. This is unprecedented. We continue to discover more minerals, no doubt through divine guidance.

The same salutary results show in most sectors, including in agriculture and in tourism. Both draw from our God-given resources, once more echoing the need to ensure we put God at the heart of our development.

Late last week, I received an utterly lifting progress report from Driefontain Mission. Our Catholic Church has embraced our mantra of Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, and has started applying it in the Church. Through an investment vehicle the Catholic Church has dubbed Stella Mundi, it has embarked on an ambitious agricultural and value-addition programme, which the Church envisages will be rolled out to cover the whole country. The Bishops, led by Archbishop Ndlovu, have used the Church farm at Driefontain to tease out this new concept. As at last week, they had planted over 200 hectares of wheat, under seven centre pivots. More hectarage is being planted as I write. I thank the Catholic Church leaders for this salutary venture.

What is even more significant is that the funds the Church had mobilised for the project from well-wishers overseas were impounded by some Western country which has imposed sanctions on our country! They did not give up. They approached Government and, together, we worked out a funding package for the whole project. Now it has taken off, and is set to expand and scale-up in intervening seasons. In due course, the Church will stand on its own.

The Catholic Church story is the story of our economy and of our country.

They say we should never waste a good crisis. As a nation, we have decided a bad crisis wrought by sanctions should be made good by us looking inward, and by us mobilising our own God-given resources. The lesson from Driefontain shows and demonstrates a lifting symbiosis between the three mantras we have coined for ourselves; and how, through them, we invent an enduring framework for a new partnership between the State and the Church. Both institutions, after all, serve the same person created in the image of God.

By President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the Sunday Mail

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