LAST weekend, I attended a talk delivered by Tobias Takaravasha, the Senior Officer for Agricultural Policy and Investment for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Takavarasha spoke to us here in South Africa about leaving behind a legacy, a heritage, an inheritance and something people will talk about presently and after you are gone.

This week, I will attempt to link our financial pursuits whichever part of the world we are currently located to the building of our own individual and collective legacies.  According to Takavarasha, a legacy is something unique and extraordinary that will impact on the lives of other people and is a deliberate sacrificial act that one passionately chooses to do for others with no selfish motive.

He mentioned David Beckham’s football legacy, Nelson Mandela’s legacy of liberation and reconciliation and of course Jesus Christ’s legacy of love, life, forgiveness, victory, peace and joy.

You may all say these are mega legacies you have mentioned here, how does a person in the street slogging it out at the back of behind somewhere to sustain a living fit into this? Everyone has a shoe size that fit their own feet and we should stay away from trying to wear other people’s shoes.

Most of us tend to leave the issues of legacy to our later part of our lives, something to do afterwards when all our dreams have been accomplished. Legacy building should not be an afterthought but should be anchored on what we do on a daily basis.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Jairos Jiri had waited to take care of the needs of the physically challenged until all his ducks were in a row? Would there be a Jairos Jiri Association today? If Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, Hebert Wiltshire Chitepo, Dr Edison Sithole, Josiah Magama Tongogara and Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo had waited when the conditions were ripe to start agitating for the emancipation of our country? They came out of their comfort zones and put their shoulders to the wheel unwittingly building their own legacies in the process.

Cobbling together $300,000 to pay a Big Brother contestant whom you think was unfairly treated and should have won it in the first place is not legacy building but just vanity. If you, however, take the same $300,000 and build a bridge to assist a community in Muzarabani so that their children can go to school in the rainy season and they can access a clinic and other basic services is indeed a legacy worthy of mention.

We can work hard and smart until money starts coming out through our noses and ears but if the money does not accomplish purposeful pursuits, then it would all just be meaningless as Solomon said in the big book. He would have to know particularly after going through 700 wives, a harem of concubines and building all that golden stuff but still not finding meaning in it all.

We can make a tone of money, live in the most fabulous house, drive the most expensive car, holiday in the most exclusive places and dine with the rich and famous in the most exotic restaurants, but the question some of us will ask is: so what?

Some among us will say we are hardly keeping it together ourselves and just making enough money to put food on our tables, shelter over our heads and keep the debt hounds out, and now you add this legacy stuff? I would say I hear you but while money is important in any legacy project, it is not the only important ingredient.

Perhaps you can decide in your heart what legacy you would like to build then deliberately go out and seek the money to build it. There is nothing which focuses energies for financial pursuits like purpose. If you decide you would like to build a clinic for the community of Ntabazinduna, then once that is settled, estimating what it will costs and identifying potential partners to work with just becomes the how part.

We have teachers who have left a legacy of excellency in moulding children in our Zimbabwean schools. Their legacies are scattered all over the world creating value in their pursuits. Other doctors and nurses have left a legacy of service to poor communities not just rich private patients.

For those of us who periodically sojourn from Mzansi, each time we cross the Limpopo we have no option but to acknowledge the legacy of Beit. They may have been ruthless colonialists but some of us saw our first movie in a Beit Hall. Some of our brightest have studied at some of the most eminent institutions via a legacy of Cecil John Rhodes. After all the exploitation and greed, they still had the sense to put something back in the areas they got their wealth from and for that we cannot fault them.

Dr. Alfred Nobel, who was synonymous with explosives that killed many people, left a lasting legacy of the Nobel Prize and is his name is now associated with peace rather than killing.

Stephen Covey, in that highly acclaimed book, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", has this poser: “Let's say you go to a funeral and all of your friends and relatives are there. As you walk by the body, you turn to see that it is you in the casket. You have died! You are at your own funeral.

“There are people giving speeches and talks about you and your life. What do they say? What do you hope they say? How do you want to be remembered?”

We all want a good epilogue and not those usual Zimbabwean funeral lies we are so fond of pushing. The legacy we start to build today can greatly contribute towards that eulogy.