Its taken eleven years, cost thousands of lives, driven a third of our population out of the country and left a destroyed economy, but we have finally got back to where we were in 1999.

The outreach programme to consult the people about what they want in a new constitution is about to begin. Once again, eleven years later, the voiceless have a voice.

What a time it's been, these eleven years, since last we aired our views about the principles we want to guide our lives. Its a time we will never forget and yet a time we would rather not remember.

For those of us who have managed to stay in the country during the eleven years since we last tried to rewrite our constitution, there is a distinct feeling of exhaustion in the air. There is hope too, but it is tempered with scepticism and fears of interference. The question on most people's lips is: will our wishes be respected this time round or will they be tampered with, at the last minute, by the highest of the high, the way they were in 1999.

For a third of our population (at least four million people) who have been forced to try and survive outside the country for the last decade, one of the burning issues is undoubtedly going to be that of dual citizenship. Four million people who have lived as strangers in strange lands, worked all hours of the day and night doing menial jobs that no one else would do and sent every penny that they have earned back to Zimbabwe in order to keep their extended families alive. If and when these four million people come home, they will not want to give up their foreign passports and so they will be classed as aliens when they come home. They will no longer be allowed to vote and will have that ugly word 'Alien' typed onto their Zimbabwean ID cards. A word which is defined as meaning unfriendly, unacceptable, unfamiliar, repugnant.

Multiple hundreds of thousands of people inside Zimbabwe have already had the Alien badge hung around their necks this last few years. People who were born, raised and educated here; people who have lived, worked and paid taxes here all their lives; people who have homes and businesses here; people who have invested here - all are known as aliens if their parents were not born in Zimbabwe and if they are not prepared to forfeit the birthright of their parents. The prohibition of dual citizenship in Zimbabwe affects people of all skin colours and races, regardless of where their parents originally came from including countries right next door like Zambia, Malawi or South Africa or further afield from Europe, Asia or America.

Undoubtedly citizenship will be a talking point in the constitutional outreach. Citizen, after all, means: "a member of a state, either native or naturalized," it does not mean a member of a political party.

I end this week on a note of congratulations to Ben Freeth awarded an MBE “For services to the farming community in Zimbabwe”. Thank you Ben, for giving a voice to so many and for so many sacrifices.