Tendai Ruben Mbofana
In modern Zimbabwean political rhetoric, few slogans are chanted with as much performative fervor as “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo.”
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We are constantly reminded by the ruling administration that a country is built by its own people—a concept framed as a novel, revolutionary discovery of self-reliance under foreign isolation.
Hardly a day goes by without the state media parading a government official or local villager touting how the country is being “built by its own people”.
They showcase a new borehole, a butchery at a growth point, or a community garden.
Yet, looking closely at Zimbabwe’s economic trajectory reveals a bitter, uncomfortable paradox.
The present administration did not invent the strategy of building a national economy against international headwinds.
The blueprint for real domestic economic self-reliance was drawn decades ago, under the regime of Ian Douglas Smith, during one of the most comprehensive economic embargoes in modern history.
When Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence in 1965, the United Nations hit the rogue state with mandatory trade sanctions designed to choke its economy into rapid collapse.
Instead of collapsing, the regime turned isolation into an aggressive engine of industrial self-reliance.
Under Smith, building a country by its own people was not a hollow campaign slogan plastered on billboards or used to justify state failure.
It was a ruthless, highly coordinated economic survival policy.
Faced with a total trade blockade, the Rhodesian government executed a disciplined strategy of Import Substitution Industrialisation.
Local capital was legally locked inside the country.
Currency controls were strictly enforced to prevent money laundering and capital flight.
Private enterprise and state boards worked hand-in-hand to build heavy domestic manufacturing capacity.
Factories emerged to produce complex machinery, textiles, chemicals, and consumer goods that could no longer be imported.
A domestic oil refinery and pipeline were built.
Rail networks were rapidly expanded to secure supply lines.
Agriculture was diversified from export-dependent cash crops into wheat, maize, soy, and livestock.
The territory became entirely self-sufficient in food production.
Steel works, heavy engineering foundries, and robust electrical grids were built and maintained by local expertise.
In the end, Rhodesia became an industrial, manufacturing, and agricultural giant that surpassed many on the continent.
Fast forward to present-day Zimbabwe, where the current administration invokes the exact same narrative of foreign sanctions to explain economic stagnation.
The difference in execution is night and day.
Today, the mantra “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” has been stripped of its macro-industrial meaning.
It is packaged and sold to ordinary citizens as a praise song for micro-level informal survival.
When an unemployed graduate opens a roadside vegetable stall, a small tuck shop, or digs for gold in an illegal pit, state media celebrates it as the manifestation of “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo.”
This is where the hypocrisy lies.
Celebrating informal roadside trading as “nation building” while heavy industries rot into rust is an insult to economic development.
Opening a small shop is not industrialisation; it is an act of desperation by citizens abandoned by their state.
While Smith’s regime marshaled every dollar of domestic capital into heavy manufacturing, steel mills, and agricultural self-sufficiency, today’s policy environment does the exact opposite.
It presides over currency instability, decaying power infrastructure, high corruption, and mass capital flight.
The tragedy is that the current administration claims to champion domestic self-reliance while doing the exact opposite of what makes self-reliance work.
Real national construction requires disciplined resource management, protection of local industry, massive capital reinvestment, and reliable infrastructure like power and water.
It requires a state that builds factories, not one that celebrates when its citizens are forced into informal hawking just to buy dinner.
If the current regime is serious about “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo”, it must stop treating the phrase as an excuse for state abdication.
Slogans do not generate electricity, manufacture machinery, or stabilize a national currency.
Building a nation requires economic discipline, institutional competence, and structural industrial development.
The UDI era proved that even an isolated country can build a powerful, self-sustaining industrial economy through sheer domestic planning.
It is time the current leadership stopped hiding behind cheap rhetoric, learned the economic mechanics of real autarky, and actually started building.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com