By
Bernard Bwoni
Here
is a woman of substance, a woman with a charitable disposition and a woman of
tangible and visibly irrefutable influence. Whilst the distinction between
those who serve the self and those who serve others is often obvious, in this ‘global
village’ that dividing line is often deliberately obscured and determined by
those who carry the world media key. Any Internet search engine on Dr Grace
Mugabe will 99.99% of the time carry headlines portraying an uncaring and
over-indulgent First Lady. Behind the media extracts and sensational headlines
there is a intelligent woman of meaning, real meaning very much in touch with
the grassroots, a passionate and caring wife, mother to her own children and
orphaned children and a highly innovative business-minded philanthropic mother
of the nation. Her selfless sacrifice to needy and orphaned children remains
cushioned from reporting by those who paint the erroneous and dishonest picture
of a substance-free shopaholic. The fact of the matter is that Dr Grace Mugabe
is a progressive prime mover, the mother and the brains behind a well-run
Children’s Home in Mazowe and currently in the process of building a school and
working on plans for a University that will benefit present and future
generations of Zimbabwe. She is an inspiration to all women in Zimbabwe and
mother to many neglected, abandoned and deprived children. She is an inspiring
pacemaker with a meaningful and proven track record of community and grassroots
work through her charity work.
Dr Grace Mugabe has often described herself as a
‘workaholic’ and that is fully backed by results of her hard work on the ground.
On top of running her children’s home and working on other charitable projects
she is also a successful dairy farmer with over 2500 dairy cows. Dr Grace
Mugabe has the charitable bone permanently etched right down to her spirit and
listening carefully to her recent meet the people addresses minus the
specifically nit-picked sound-bites and riveting headlines in most opposition
and international media sources there indeed is profound depth and a genuine
desire to uplift and upgrade the lives of the disadvantaged and unprivileged. She
has prioritised commitment to challenging the degeneracy currently bedevilling
the nation and addressing issues affecting ordinary citizens on a daily basis.
She has challenged corruption, she has challenged inconsistencies in terms of
service delivery and she has ruffled the cushy culture of impunity that has
been rooting itself freely in some sections of the upper echelons of power in
Zimbabwe. Dr Grace Mugabe has put emphasis on keeping the people of Zimbabwe
informed and instilled genuine commitment to challenging the decadence.
The
unreported Grace Mugabe has community work credentials and her recent
meet-the-grassroots addresses focused on practical issues that affect people in
the local communities on a daily basis. She met with Cross Border Traders and
tackled pertinent issues that affect this important entity in the Zimbabwe
economy. In Zimbabwe over 5.8 million people are employed in the informal
sector and this contribute significantly to the social and economic functioning
of the state. These are relevant and befitting issues to be thrust on the
forefront of the national discourse and come up with solutions to address them.
Her encouragement and advice to the Cross Border Traders to accept slow growth
as opposed to quick economic gains is sound economic advice. Any business is a
process where you lay the foundations and from there that is where the take-off
happens. She made sound and welcome promises of championing for the traders to
get land and start producing which will enhance livelihoods. She has been
talking about facilitating women to be given land, focusing on the productive
agriculture sector and indigenous Zimbabweans becoming self-sustaining and self-reliant.
She is talking about real wealth creation as opposed to the retrogressive
notion of mere workers who do not own the means of production. In another
address in Gwanda Dr Grace Mugabe touched on a number of very important issues
and highlighted the importance of education and humanity. She said that ‘’Education without
humanity is useless, even if you educated, you need to be humane and don’t lead
children astray’’. These are pertinent issues that do not get any media
attention. She talked about the importance of family, the ravages of child
abuse and domestic violence. She also challenged government’s policy of
demolition of illegal residential structures without finding alternatives for
them. She did not condone the illegal structures but her argument was that
alternatives were needed for those displaced. The problem is that by destroying
the structures you create another problem of homeless people. Now these are
issues that no ‘global media’ will highlight about the First Lady. She has
spoken incessantly about women’s issues and the need for women to be educated
and to have land to help improve their economic prospects. It is unfortunate
that many have tended to focus only on the stirring headlines and the Peta
Thornycroft cock and bull stories instead of the depth and wealth behind most
of Dr Grace Mugabe’s addresses.
She does possess a clear awareness of
Zimbabwe’s economic policy as evidenced in another of her addresses where she highlighted the
importance of the country’s look east policy and the implementation of the
country’s economic blueprint ZimAsset. One of the key issues she has
consistently and passionately focused on has been the issue of corruption and the
negative image it portrays about the country. She has persistently stressed the negative outcomes of letting corruption go unchallenged as it undermines the trust people have in government and some individuals in positions of authority resources that could have been used for collective national benefit towards individual gratifications. Beneath all the negative and
biased representation of the First Lady there is breath and depth, a solid
commitment to addressing the issues of the downtrodden and bringing to the
foreground all these issues. The reassuring thing about the First Lady is that
it is not all empty words, she is a woman of action and she has the
substance-endowed charitable curriculum vitae to back it. She is upholds the
very same principles as her husband President Mugabe who has dedicated his
entire life liberating and empowering the indigenous African peoples and
redressing the inequalities created by the colonial system. In another of her
meet the people addresses Dr Mugabe lamented the case of those resettled
farmers who were reluctant to seize the opportunities presented to them. She
like President Mugabe has emphasised the urgent need to start unlocking,
dismantling and restructuring the previously biased system which still
continues to tie down African minds and limiting their potential to enhance
themselves. No gimmicks but this as real as life itself gets, the freshness and
reality of the grassroots, physically touching the ground and tackling issues
head-on. There is a lot more substance behind those dramatic news headlines and
sensational media clips.
bernardbwoni.blogspot.com
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