ARE we forgetting the liberation struggle narrative?
If so, where then are we anchored as a nation?
The Americans, for example, never stop talking about their founding fathers, from Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, among others.
These men died more than 150 years ago but Americans still honour them as men who made the US ‘great’.
It is, therefore, unfortunate and sickening to hear a Zimbabwean disparaging the liberation struggle narrative, claiming to be ‘tired of it’.
It is not just maddening but very sad and very frightening.
When one demands that the leaders of the nation speak of something else and desist from discoursing about the liberation struggle, what is he/she demanding?
If we are in that frame of mind, of wanting to do away with the liberation discourse, then the country is in danger of going back to the very same people that we fought.
If we possess that kind of thinking, how do we account for ourselves to the departed?
Surely, just 42 years after independence, should you be done talking about those brothers and sisters who never came back home so that you could be free?
Pardon me, but how dumb can one be when one is convinced to forget and not talk about his/her liberation struggle, which is ongoing and not yet over, convinced to do so by people who celebrate, every day, victories of their nations achieved some 300 years ago.
Some among us have been convinced by our former colonisers to totally forget about our history.
They have been hoodwinked into believing that where they come from doesn’t matter at all.
They drink the finest Scotch whiskey and, in their drunken stupor, vomit on those who gave them that privilege.
They live in posh houses and, in them, forget the harsh conditions endured during the liberation struggle so that they dwell in warmth.
Indeed, the truth is that we are physically liberated, but we are still mentally colonised.
How many of us have been ideologically transformed?
No doubt, some of the ideologies that some have are politically and culturally toxic.
Why should we forget our past? Have the Jews forgotten? Have the Afrikaners forgotten the Boer War? Should then Zimbabweans forget crimes committed against them by the same people who continue to haunt us to date.
Yes, we can forgive, but to forget is tantamount to treason.
Forgetting serves nothing but to create a vacuum in the mind – a vacuum needed by our very enemies so that they can in the place of our ideologies put in theirs.
The very same enemies and mischief makers who occupied our physical spaces a century ago are now coming through the backdoor to occupy our mental spaces.
Sadly, some in our midst, and for a few pieces of silver, have entirely given up their mental space to foreign ideologies.
What a pity. They are spineless and they must be reminded of what we said in our lead story, that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat their mistakes.
The liberation discourse is here to stay and it is from this very same discourse that we draw strength as well as inspiration to face tomorrow’s challenges.