There are those writers whose contribution to public discourse is not a surfeit regurgitation of the mundane.
Their writing gives matrimony between ideas and their relevance to a people's lived realities.
I am not talking of writing as an imitation of reality -- but writing as a philosophical enterprise of reminding societies about the significance of their various histories in informing their path into immediate existential mandates and the future.
One such writer is Gibson Nyikadzino (a leading literary patron in this publication), whose thought-line constantly evokes that Pan-Africanist/leftist inclination to being Zimbabwean and being African.
He is archetypical of the now missing Tafataona Mahoso profundity in our newspapers.
His instalment in yesterday's copy of The Chronicle, is a recap of the missing link between the impending SADC Summit and the regional body's socio-genesis drivers.
These include, but are not limited, to unity against the collective overthrow of colonialism, establishing post-independence enablers for regional peace and security.
Nyikadzino's piece reflected on the sanctuary and ideological functions rendered to Zimbabwe by her decolonisation big-sister states like Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania, among other states.
That way, our national independence was delivered. We are indebted to our neighbours for their selfless contributions to our national liberation.
Zimbabwe and African agency
The forthcoming SADC Summit therefore, naturally compels Zimbabwe's allegiance renewal to the region's enduring values as pivoted on the creed of Pan-Africanism.
Zimbabwe's SADC Summit host role transcends the annual routine protocol courtesies extended to the regional body's member-states.
The summit is a unique reciprocal moment for Zimbabwe. Since the wake of the millennium Zimbabwe has enjoyed various regional support against the odds of malicious regime change endeavours emanating from Anglo-American anti-land reform prejudices.
The new life-cycle for the region's policy planning under the chairmanship of Zimbabwe should activate that organic essence of African agency to deal with all issues affecting the region.
We must reassert our confidence to do things our way.
Intra-dependency mechanisms driven by our neighbourliness must be at the core of our regional decision-making matrix. Our unity of purpose should be more defining to the future of regional industrialisation and innovation.
The obvious fraternal ties' dividends will dissuade any antagonistic hobnobbing attempts by neo-colonial forces to indirectly impose their hostile policies in the region.
Our nation is therefore, bestowed with the moral obligation to go beyond the limits in hosting a memorable SADC Summit. This explains the generous financial injection to the summit preparations by the Government.
Outside the added host infrastructural optics, the ordinary Zimbabwe will be a beneficiary of the amenity souvenirs in the form of roads, refurbished tourism facilities, upgraded health facilities, a fast-paced cyber city leftover and a modern water reticulation system for Harare and an erstwhile development limping Mount Hampden.
In the same vein, the summit presents an affirmation moment for Zimbabwe's bona fide connection to the continent's collective anti-colonial struggles.
This also comes at a time when the pervasive influence of colonialism is intrusively asserting its hostile place in the continent's policy-making architecture.
Geo-political repositioning
This is an opportunity for us to rethink the meaning of our regional fraternities in the wake of the imposing neo-colonial globalisation agenda.
This globalism is making decisions for Africans without the Africans.
Africa is prey to an international liberalist dictatorship, which has caused market forces to push to the periphery the dignity of the entire Global-South.
We cannot make decisions in the United Nations Security Council and yet we are the most extracted centre of the global capitalist economies.
Today, Africans are bearing the devastating effects of a predominantly Western induced climate change.
Whether real or imagined, biological warfare is at the centre of African nation's fiscal strains.
With the El Niño drought ravaging our vulnerable communities, we should have consorted disaster preparedness mechanisms.
This multilayer existential crisis has created an exigent need for unity within the SADC region.
It is pleasing that Harare will take centre stage as the new citadel of regional diplomacy and multilateral cohesion.
In the capitals of the Global-North Harare is unpopular for its trailblazing anti-colonial strides.
This explains why Zimbabwe is still captive to illegal sanctions which were a consequence of the realignment of property rights owing to the land reform programme. Again, it is in Harare that the monopoly of Western Direct Investment has been defied by robust and lively sanction bursting economic policy interventions.
The Second Republic now prides itself of a new gold-backed currency.
This is an outgrowth of a diligent monetary and fiscal consolidation framework.
Clearly, Zimbabwe's development path is evident of the possibility of African self-contained measures to undermine global oligopoly capital benchmarks. This is a stride worth emulating by other SADC Member-States earnestly thriving to wean their economies out of international market monopoly dictates.
De-bordering Africa for perpetual prosperity
Cyclone Idai and the Covid-19 virus are elaborately instructive of how much pandemics and disasters know no borders.
If viruses and disasters render colonial border demarcations useless, our shared pasts and respective destinies must urge all SADC member States to open up our economies.
Pro-development and de-bordering agendas must anchor our regional integration interests as guided by the aspirations of the luminary nationalist generation- on whose shoulders rests the continuity of our shared destiny.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
We must be having industrialisation-charged incentives for dismantling the border mindset and its subsequent xenophobic toxicity.
Pandemics and disasters' devastating agency must not supersede the voluntary agency of our geo-political pull factors to unity.
We must open up the borders for goods and services as this forms the foundational premise for pan-Africanism not to be a much-ado about rhetoric, but a vehicle for development longevity from Cape to Cairo.
Africa: unite or perish
The forthcoming SADC summit should strengthen liberation movements' resolve to fight all the machinations of imperialism.
Beyond the diplomatic multilateral significance of the summit, liberation movements must take the opportunity to reflect on their common fate to the whims of imperialism. Their determined inclination to longevity must be scaffold by principles of Pan-Africanism.
Now is the time, and the coming SADC Summit beckons two critical options for the region --unity or perishing.
SADC must choose unity, as Samora Machel taught us, "For the nation to live the tribe must die" Likewise, for Pan-Africanism to live the nation must die.
In this instance the "nation" is a construct of the primordial Berlin fabrication and a negotiated predatory border caricature. Therefore, the metaphysical rethink of the "post-colonial" nation will give rise to Julius Kambarage Nyerere's Uhuru na Ujamaah clarion call.
Until then, the struggle continues unabated!
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is a committed Pan-Africanist and director International Communication Services in the Ministry of Information Publicity and Broadcasting Services. Feedback: [email protected].
