HomeOld_PostsWillpower born out of gloom....education sector take heed

Willpower born out of gloom….education sector take heed

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THE war arrived in our village late in 1977.
I can’t recall the exact date when Sabhuku Chimhuka walked the village line announcing: “Vakomana vasvika, munhu wese huku negumbeze kwaNzombe!”
Looking back now, it was probably a couple of months before the dastardly attack on Chimoio by Rhodesian forces on November 23 1977.
Rhodies named it ‘Operation Dingo’.
At the subsequent pungwes in the village, we never got to know of the Chimoio massacre.
Either the news travelled slowly in the village or the news was too horrendous for war motivation.
Whatever the case, the war’s arrival in our village signalled final encirclement of Rhodesia which triggered desperate response from Rhodesian forces.
For the few months I was in the Unyetu war zone, I soon learnt that the following were legitimate targets during the war:
l Sell-outs.
l Witches.
l Dip tanks.
l Schools and
l Churches.
In early 1978, schools had closed down.
Modumedi Moleli’s Methodist worship and accompanying Wesleyan hymns had given way to Chimurenga melodies, while a number of sell-outs had been executed.
Erisha’s mbira biras and traditional religion had also received a major boost from these developments.
From Murehwa, we received the sad news that my maternal uncle, Sekuru Ticha, was fighting for dear life after a severe flogging at a pungwe.
He had been sold out for his no-nonsense attitude in exacting fees payments at the school he was heading.
‘Pasi nezvikoro’ appeared well accepted war-time philosophy.
That same year, 1978, I headed for Mutare to finish my Grade Seven, but my Unyetu friends remained behind and by independence in 1980, most of them had lost two-to-three years of schooling.
In 1985 during my varsity Teach in Rural Areas (TIRA) stint, at a nearby ‘Upper-top’ secondary school, I had the embarrassment of teaching former classmates.
At the local watering hole, I socialised not with my old school friends, but with the much older group ‘mazindege’, as we called ZINTEC in-service-trainee teachers.
Having to shed off my friends because of my new-found teacher status was a horrific experience.
In the late 1990s, I found myself back in Mutare at the local museum.
One November afternoon, a group of local politicians and war veterans walked into my office unannounced with a very unusual request.
They included Moses Mvenge and Charles Pemhenayi, both late now.
All they wanted were slashers and transport so that they could go and clean up the Chimoio site in memory of their slain comrades.
Soon after this visit, I conferred with the late Caxton Mavhera and my head office.
This set in motion a chain of events that today have rescued with dignity Chimoio and other liberation war shrines.
Chimoio was already a household name, not least because of the late National Hero, and the Patriotic Front’s spokesperson at the Lancaster House Talks in 1979 Edson Zvobgo’s emotional recall of the atrocities on national television in 1980.
During the war we had known it in Mutare as ‘Villa Pery’, the dream destination for every revolutionary youth in the neighbourhood.
History also tells us of our shared umbilical cord with this area which used to be in the precincts of the Mutapa Empire.
The place was named after ‘Chimoyo’, son of Ganda, a local Moyo chief in the pre-Portuguese period.
So the request from the war veterans for slashers was quite in keeping with the age-old tradition of ‘Kutsvaira maDzimbahwe’.
Cde Zvobgo’s public shedding of tears during 1980 when describing the Chimoio attack was no act for TV cameras.
The late Retired Brigadier-General Dr Felix Muchemwa was later to describe the attack, in The Struggle for Land in Zimbabwe (1890 – 2010), as the bloodiest air and ground attack ever carried out by the Rhodesian forces.
He describes the post-attack images: “The tour of post-attack Chimoio was a doctor’s nightmare.
The carnage was worse than Nyadzonia.
The majority, over 1 000 had died on the parade grounds from high velocity shrapnel from the bombs.
The bodies were mangled, with injuries to the head, neck, chest and abdomen resulting in blown out chests and eviscerated bowels.
Ghastly traumatic amputations of limbs were also common among the dead and almost all survivors of the bombing had shrapnel injuries to limbs.”
But Chimoio also deserves to be celebrated more than just being mourned.
As noted by Agrippa Mutambara in The Rebel in Me (excuse the pun), “Out of the gloom and doom unleashed on November 23 1977, a new purposefulness and determination was born…”
In fact, the seeds had been planted earlier and only got watering from the blood-shed.
Fay Chung, in Re-Living the Second Chimurenga, recalls how the first ZANU Education Department headquarters was established at Chimoio and from here, became a very successful bush education programme.
Using very limited resources and abundant innovation and improvisation, they established distance education programmes in teacher-training and schools administration, resulting in TEI and TEII (Teacher Education Part One and Part Two) certification.
Out of this was born the post-independence demystification of secondary education with the advent of Upper-tops and distance teacher-training with ZINTEC.
Little had I known in 1985 that my ‘zindege’ drinking mates were products of Chimoio ideas?
So what we assumed was ‘Pasi nezvikoro’ at the front was in fact at rear bases like Chimoio ‘Pamberi nekudzidza’.
So as we recall the Chimoio atrocities, let us also remember that it was out of Chimoio that the foundation stone for Zimbabwe’s success stories in education was laid.
The phenomenal expansion of education, especially through Upper-tops, ZINTEC and the (Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production) ZIMFEP owes a lot to the work started at Chimoio.
Let the education sector take note.

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