Story by Tafara Chikumira
THE partnership between the Midlands State University (MSU) and the Chirumanzu community has transformed part of the Holy Cross area into a greenbelt, with the society now enjoying agricultural activities all year round.
The resuscitation of the Holy Cross Dam last year is proving to be a game changer as the community has witnessed the restoration of irrigation schemes, which are now running as agro-innovations and rural industrialisation projects.
Under the agro-business project, the MSU is providing financial and technical support, while the community is providing the much-needed labour to the five schemes on site.
“We have scheme A, B, C, D and E. At scheme B we currently have 30 hectares under sugar beans. At scheme E we have six hectares under green mealies. We have since sold two hectares, and now we are left with four hectares. We have a truck load of green mealies, and the market is there. Before we planted these green mealies, we used to have cabbages which we have since sold,” Holy Cross Irrigation Scheme farm manager, Mr Atwell Makuvaza said.
The community is grateful to the Second Republic for the life-changing opportunities that have been brought about by the inception of the project.
“Our children are now occupied. As parents, we now have monetised projects where we are also sending our children to school with no challenges. I believe if we had started this in the eighties soon after independence, we should be somewhere by now so I want to thank the vision of our President,” a community member and beneficiary of the project said.
“We are now taking care of our children. We used to survive on piece works but now the game has since changed. We have also leant a lot in terms of best agronomical practices. We now know how to farm cabbages as well as other farming methods we did not know before,” another community member said.
“Our livelihoods before President Emmerson Mnangagwa and our local MP were miserable. Now we are witnessing agriculture as a business where we farmed cabbages and they did well and now we have green mealies that are doing well we never used to experience such,” a community member added.
The Holy Cross Irrigation scheme is one of the many projects initiated by the Second Republic to ensure food self-sustenance at household level through rural industrialisation and modernisation as the country journeys towards attaining an upper middle-income society status by 2030.
