ONCE, the Catholic leadership was asked why it is that once someone becomes a Catholic, they always are Catholic, their response was: ‘We get them when they are young.’
The same wisdom was applied during the liberation struggle in our schools. Though too young to hold their gun against the Rhodesian enemy, the children were full-fledged fighters in their own right hence at crèche they sang:
‘I have decided to follow ZANU,
No more turning back!’
The preparation of fighters started in those infant years and rightly so and as psychology would confirm, it started when they were still in the womb as their mothers fought with the enemy, dodged enemy bullets and hid in the ravines as enemy planes flew past. They were born into the struggle, and they were prepared for the confrontation with the enemy to free their country.
In July of 1978, after we had been bombed at Pasichigare in the Mudzingadzi area, we temporarily settled at New Stores base while plans were being made to transfer us to a more permanent base.
We had among us a little boy called Nhamo. Little Nhamo had always regarded himself as General Tongogara, and he required that he be regarded so. Whenever he came upon comrades young and old, he would call them to attention and we would humour him. Thus he had assumed command of his fellow pre-schoolers.
The enemy had already started flying over us almost as soon as we got there. On one of these days, Nhamo was walking across the camp when an enemy plane flew over our air space.
“Cover, take cover,’ he ordered his crèche-mates,
“Munoramba muchifamba pachena, munofunga kuti indege dzaComrade Samora?’ he remonstrated.
When children are taught something when they are still very young, it stays with them, and they grow up to be like that, nothing else that happens in later years can change them fundamentally. Psychology reveals that by age five, the character of a child is formed.
Ian Smith knew that once these children were imbued with the spirit of the revolution, nothing would change them, this is why at Chimoio he butchered the children. Whole classes of 40, 50 children were wiped out. Chindunduma was decimated, the intention of the enemy was to annihilate them, the children who survived, it was by the grace of God, they were defenseless.
This same viciousness was displayed in July of 1978, when Smith’s bombers and helicopters attacked Gondola. The children had been at Gondola until a week before the attack. Anticipating the attack, security had moved the children to Pasichigare, a safer location in the Mudzingadzi area, where there was plenty of foliage, and so plenty of cover for the children unlike Gondola which was all white buildings, fruit trees and pine trees which could catch fire from bombs.
‘Musi iwoyo Smith akabuda shavi roumhondi hwake.’ An army of bombers rained bombs on the camp. The fragments were as big as ‘muromo wegejo’, they were so big and sharp, they sliced through the walls of brick buildings. It is terrifying to imagine what savage harm they would have done to the children had they still been at Gondola on this 19th day of July. They knew it was a children’s camp and to fight defenseless children they mobilized such an arsenal. They used napalm, and helicopters scoured through the fruit trees, the pine trees and the tall grass hoping to find the school children and slaughter each one of them. In their bid to locate and kill the children, they cut the grass to the ground and sheared the branches off the fruit trees until only short stems were left. Their reconnaissance had located the children at Gondola and they had come to finish off each one of these survivors of the Chimoio massacre. Had our security not been ahead of the Rhodesians, this would have been another horrific slaughter.
That’s how much the Rhodesian regime was afraid of Chindunduma, that’s how much it hated the children, the Rhodesians were utterly inhuman in their attitude to these children. A cowardly regime that murdered defenseless children, in its bid to ensure that no-one would continue the struggle, that there should be no heirs to the struggle, it revealed its barbarism, that it had no shred of morals or ethics.
The potential of these children frightened the Rhodesian regime out of its wits and with good reason too. These children were our insurance for surviving a protracted struggle and for the defense of the revolution after independence.
The fearlessness of these Chindunduma children was demonstrated by a little boy who on arriving at the Nyamapanda border as the children were being repatriated from Matenje base in Tete Province, could not resist fighting the Rhodesian soldiers at the border post “Ndimi maihayasha Povo kaimi!” he challenged them. He was only a kindergartener but his spirit was big and strong and it still continued the struggle.
Today we say that if each child is not taught correctly from the earliest ages, they may never make it as heirs of Zimbabwe.
The wisdom of the liberation struggle is what should inform our programmes today in education, our priorities today in education.
The wisdom of the liberation struggle has been proved correct, it brought Zimbabwe back. If Zimbabwe is to succeed, this same wisdom has to be applied.
It is this wisdom which defeated Ian Smith, so let us apply the wisdom of the victorious. The victorious taught children ‘Gwara reZANU’ right from crèche.
We stand to win if we teach Zimbabwe’s kindergarteners ‘Gwara reZimbabwe.’
Zimbabwe’s youngest need to learn about who they are as Zimbabweans, and that their task is to complete the work of liberating the country which was started by their heroes who fought the war of liberation. They need to learn that their task is to build a Great Zimbabwe and they need to learn this right from crèche.
That Zimbabwe is ours once again is something for which sons of Zimbabwe where beheaded in Rhodesian prisons, for which some suffered excruciating imprisonment and still others were burned alive in their homes. Can then we fail to teach our children this sacred truth of their true identity as Zimbabweans who have a sacred duty to Zimbabwe and its people?
Their predecessors in the liberation struggle sang:
‘I can hear Zimbabwe calling
Take your arms and free the nation!’
Their predecessors died for their Zimbabwe, so tender in years, they still accepted that it is correct to suffer and die for their country.
We should let the children hear Zimbabwe calling, they love this precious country no less than their predecessors. They too will be heirs of Zimbabwe.
We have a sacred duty to assist them to be heirs of Zimbabwe.