WHEN I looked at the National School Pledge, I was hard-pressed to find anything that could be offensive to anyone.
Almighty God, in whose hands our future lies,
I salute the national flag
United in our diversity by our common desire for freedom, justice and equality.
Respecting the brave fathers and mothers who lost lives in the Chimurenga/Umvukela
And national liberation struggles
We are proud inheritors of our national resources
We are proud creators and participants in our vibrant traditions and cultures
We commit to honesty and the dignity of hard work.
I therefore wondered why opposition papers went to town advocating a mass rejection of the pledge by parents.
I wondered why anyone would today be offended by the idea of Zimbabwean children saluting a (their) National Flag that has for the past 36 years already been saluted by their parents and grandparents.
I wondered why anyone would not want to ‘respect the brave fathers and mothers who lost lives in the Chimurenga/Umvukela’.
I wondered why Zimbabweans would not want their children to be proud ‘inheritors of our national resources; proud creators and participants in our vibrant traditions and cultures’.
I wondered why Zimbabweans would not want their children ‘to commit themselves to honesty and the dignity of hard work’.
I could only say to myself: Is ignorance not death?
Is the failure to introspect not death too?
It stands ironic that those who have vigorously resisted the National School Pledge in the private and social media have done so in the name of Christianity.
Without any research or critical thinking, they have spiritualised a practical National School Pledge into a blasphemy and an act of satanism deliberately tailored to persecute Christian children.
Yet, they claim to be guided by the prophet Hosea’s warning: “My people perish from a lack of knowledge.” – (Hosea 4:6 KJV)
The supposed Christian contention against the National School Pledge is; if it does not mention ‘Jesus’, then it must be satanic and a worshipping of a flag ‘chifananidzo’.
Yet, for 36 years now, the Zimbabwean majority has come to attention whenever the National Flag is raised or lowered and the action has been in salute or homage to what the flag stands for.
And, no one has ever doubted that the blood represented by the red on the Zimbabwean flag is not the blood of ‘Jesus’, but the blood of men and women who died fighting British satanism sanitised as Christianity by Rhodesian settlers.
It is the blood of ‘stockholders’ murdered by Rhodesian and black puppet ‘stakeholders’.
It is the red of the blood of brave black fighters who were sometimes baptised into the Christian faith to sedate the anguish of dispossession followed by murder – kuvapa chiveve chemumweya kuti vatambure nekushungurudzika vasina hasha.
For 36 years now, every patriotic Zimbabwean has stood up to sing a National Anthem that takes stock of the sacrifice our heroes made against Christians like Ian Smith and David Coltart – a sacrifice not for the kingdom of heaven, but material and ancestral Zimbabwe.
And, everyone has known that the heroes invoked in our National Anthem are definitely not British-settler Christians like Robert Moffat or Father Ritchartz (who tried to baptise Nehanda’s medium before murdering her) or the Catholic Father Biehler.
Those who read history will remember that during the First Chimurenga, Father Biehler’s insistence to settler forces was: “Our mode of fighting is not the proper one for MaShonas.
“It seems to me that the only way of doing anything at all with these natives is to starve them, destroy their lands and kill all that can be killed.” (Ranger, 1967: p.295)
The heroes invoked in our National Anthem today are therefore the black victims of that British imperial satanism.
Incidentally, it is not a secret that the brave men and women who perished contesting British occupation did not die fighting for the kingdom of heaven.
It had been preached to them in the mission schools they abandoned to join the liberation struggle.
It is the red of the blood of men and women who had seen the light and recognised that the kingdom that was being preached to them was an unattainable holy grail.
And it is downright naïve for Christians to reject a National School Pledge
For 36 years now, everyone has known that Chimurenga (liberation struggle) invoked in our National Anthem is derived from Murenga and he is the Godfather of Zimbabwe.
Everyone knows that wherever Murenga is invoked, it is never as a Christian saint, but as the ancestral spirit most crucial to the sovereignty of Zimbabwe.
No one has ever mistaken Chimurenga for a Christian crusade.
Everyone knows that Chimurenga was a struggle for liberation from Rhodesians who made a genocidal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and called it ‘a victory for Christianity’.
Everyone knows that there were no churches (Christian or otherwise) at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembwe, Mkushi and other camps.
At Chimoio, there was instead, ‘Pasichigare’, where spirit mediums resided and gave spiritual advice on how the liberation struggle was to be prosecuted.
The churches were at New Sarum Air Force Base, Thornhill Air Force Base, Rhodesia Light Infantry, the Selous Scouts Base at Inkomo as well all other Rhodesian Army bases from where those who committed the genocides at Chibondo, Butcher Farm, Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembwe, Mkushi, among others, launched their attacks.
The role of the Christian churches in those bases was to give spiritual fortitude to Rhodesian white settler ‘stakeholders’ and those black people fighting for a ‘stake’ not of physical Zimbabwe, but for crumbs that fell from Rhodesian tables and of course the heavenly ‘holy grail’.
The fore-going observations are bloodied and haunting facts that stubbornly refuse to be sanitised by Christianity.
They make it perfectly reasonable to demand of those Christians who have chosen to rubbish the National School Pledge as satanic to give us their own rationale of accepting the sovereignty, the freedoms and the benefits brought by ancestral sacrifice, while at the same time attempting to exclude the ancestral champions from a National School Pledge to preserve the gains they made for everyone.
It is downright unreasonable to insist that the official religion of a nation liberated by ancestral faith should in fact be the faith that was used to colonise it.
It is downright unreasonable and naïve to appropriate and make God exclusively Christian.
God is not Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or any other faith or creed.
God is just God.
Mwari ndiMwari chete, havasi muKristu.
A Zimbabwean nation that has freedom of worship by a constitutional choice guaranteed by the United Nations Universal Human Rights Charter (UNHRC) must never allow a few unreasonable Christians to impede a pledge to its founding values because those ‘pseudo-Christians’ believe if the pledge does not mention Jesus, then it must be satanic.
Perhaps those who don’t subscribe to our ethos should follow disgruntled Rhodesian die-hards to UK to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and in that breath pledge their loyalty to one who headed the empire that wrought genocide not just in Zimbabwe, but across the globe.
Or, they could go to the US and pledge their loyalty to the founding fathers who sanctioned the servitude of the black race.