EDUCATION has always been used as a subtle tool by the Western imperialists to take lasting control over the minds of the people whose countries they colonised.
Even after independence neo-colonialism has seen some blacks at the forefront in using the same tool to perpetuate the interests of our erstwhile colonisers.
This is a development from slavery where the imperialists’ control over slaves from Africa was overt as it was both physical and brutal.
With education, colonial victims unconsciously and enthusiastically, not only internalise the values of their oppressors, but also trash their own.
Colonial education made it a point that we would admire the ‘bravery’ of colonisers, in our case the British, as they ‘conquered’ the world.
We were made to see no evil in their pivotal role in the partition of Africa, including Cecil John Rhodes’ dream of colonising the continent from Cape to Cairo on behalf of the British.
On slavery, we were made to appreciate the concern by the British as they highlighted the role played by people like William Wilberforce in fighting for its abolition.
What they carefully avoided in their history lessons was a detailed account of how the British benefited from this evil practice.
Generally we were made to believe whatever the British did was divine.
The British monarch was special and every morning at assembly before lessons, we had to sing the British national anthem, wishing God to save the Queen.
This we did solemnly.
Never did we wish God to do the same to our own elders, let alone our parents.
We thought this would have ended with independence.
But unfortunately this is not the case.
Elsewhere in this edition we carry a story of a ‘highly educated’ Zimbabwean professor by the name of Pamela Machakanja.
We would have thought that 35 years after independence this professor, like the other equally highly educated Zimbabweans, would now be busy trying to decolonise our minds.
Instead, Machakanja is the Director of Africa University’s Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance, a sector with academic programmes designed to promote regime change and perpetuate the colonial agenda.
And this regime change thrust is not necessarily the will of Zimbabwean universities, but definitely that of our former Western colonisers.
Because people like Professor Machakanja have been educated under a system designed by the British, they have internalised English values.
They don’t even realise it is the education which has moulded their thinking that has reduced them to British poodles.
No wonder Jesus on the Cross asked God to forgive his crucifiers ‘for they did not know what they were doing’.
It is therefore our challenge to produce Zimbabweans who know what they are doing.
The only way to have Zimbabweans with a decolonised mind is through our education system.
Let’s copy our former colonisers by imparting the values that distinguish Zimbabweans as a unique species in our schools.
Just as we were taught the heroics of the English at Waterloo, our own children must be taught about the crushing defeat of British surrogates at Mavonde.
To enhance patriotism, the liberation struggle has to be taught in detail in our schools at all levels.
Surely our children must automatically be expected to be more at home with the history of Josiah Tongogara as opposed to that of Winston Churchill.
We believe programmes like IPLG spread across Zimbabwean universities, 35 years after independence, will inspire our educationists to come up with an undiluted new Zimbabwean education curriculum.