By Dr Irene Mahamba

THE birth of ZANU lit a fire which consumed the hearts and minds of thousands of Zimbabweans, catapulting them on the road from Highfield to Heroes Acre.

What were the foot prints from Highfield to Heroes Acre? 

What guided the march from Highfield to Heroes Acre?

Kwaiva nenzira dzamasoja, a footprint. 

There was an ethos, a way of life; there was discipline that went far beyond the physical training, discipline which resided in the personhood of each combatant, defining each, the mission and what it was all about. 

It is this discipline which guided the gun — the soul of the combatant was not in the gun but in the internal spirit force which was prepared to die for others. 

That spirit force distinguished mapuruvheya, masoja aSmith, masellouts from the combatants. These too had guns, but they were thieves and murderers; they were not martyrs like the comrades. 

The combatants were not controlled by external factors but by the spirit resolve which resided within. The Commissariat Department was not superfluous, it was fundamental, it was the heart and soul of the liberation struggle.

Kwaiva nenzira dzamasoja. 

The commissariat had everything special for the revolutionary fighter, without it there would have been no focus, no intention. 

The purpose was to liberate Zimbabwe and its people and nzira dzamasoja was the way to accomplish this. 

That spirit which said this land is ours and the whiteman has no place here, he has to go back where he belongs, leave us with our wealth, our land so that we can chart our own destiny is what fired each revolutionary combatant until final victory. When at the Lancaster House, the British would have us sign a document which still held our land in the hands of the British, the foreigner, the fighters said they would go back and fight until they repossessed what is theirs, there was nothing else, it was their land or death, they were prepared to die and die until they got back their Zimbabwe. It was the most solemn commitment, heart and soul.

But then, ZANU was extremely specific; this liberation would be done in a special specific way, it was not going to be an orgy of thieves, robbers, adulterers and narcotic addicts.

Tisaite choupombwe muhondo yeChimurenga

Tisatore zvinhu zveruzhinji

Tibate vanhu zvakanaka, titaure navo zvakanaka, tidzosere zvose zvatinenge takwereta kuruzhinji

Tisanetse vasungwa vatinenge vatabata

Tisaite utsinye, kuruzhinji kana kuvasungwa.

Tizvibate neunhu hwose hworudzi rwedu…

It was a culture of unhu/ubuntu — the spirit force of the land would not have it otherwise. 

The most fundamental rule, to remember always, was that it was a people’s war; you were there for others, not for self-aggrandizement. This is what controlled the combatants; to this day ZANU PF exercises the same discipline that puts Zimbabwe first, nothing else. 

Mukufara nomukutambudzika, mukurangarirwa nomukukanganikwa, mukushaiwa zvachose, mukatamburasei namavanga okuhondo, you are still a people’s force, nothing else matters; so you don’t cause mayhem, you do not degenerate, you do not cause pandemonium because things don’t work for you, because certain promises are broken.

The forces birthed by ZANU have done Zimbabwe proud; they fulfilled their mission and have remained focused and revolutionary to this day.

This is a salutary lesson — but who has taken note of this lesson! 

During the struggle, ZANU had over 30 000 schoolchildren in eight schools. It boggles the mind why we did not have outbreaks of teenage pregnancies as is afflicting Zimbabwe today. 

We never knew nor heard of contraceptives in our schools. Our children were not found in Mozambican homesteads seeking kachasu, or other forms of drugs.

What was the secret? 

It is not too difficult to understand:

Firstly, these children had purpose, they were consumed by that fire which was lit on August 8 1963 when ZANU was founded, to get rid of the white menace by force of arms. 

Thus they knew why they were in the struggle; for very serious business, to liberate their land, young as they were, nine-year-olds, eight-year-olds — they deliberately left home and all its comforts to liberate this great gracious land, their motherland.

And what did ZANU do when these children presented themselves as fighters for their country? 

The Party said: thank you comrades for coming to join arms with us to liberate to our land, thank you very much but you are still too young to be on the battlefield so, in the meantime, we put you in schools and when you grow up you will be trained and then you can fulfill your wish to liberate our land. 

Initially, the children were disappointed; they wanted their gun there and then to fight for Zimbabwe. For some of them, it was a while before they accepted this change of mission — they would still run away to the military camps in search of the ultimate goal, fighting. 

It was the illustrious work of the Commissariat to work with these youngsters, to keep that 1963 light alive, vibrant. 

These children were trained as combatants, heart and soul, the only thing they did not have was the gun — it would be a few years yet.

Nzira dzamasoja was their way of life, their soul, their bread. 

Love among comrades was the most critical factor. Comrade, they were taught, was ‘shamwari yeropa’, there was no truer nor stronger bond. 

The rest of nzira dzamasoja fell into place on this basis — takasungana kuti tisunungure nyika, iwe uri wangu, ini ndiri wako, takangodaro, tinofa tichienda kuZimbabwe. 

So they could carry on even after Nyadzonia, Chimio and Pasichigare, among other camps.

Imbued in the milieu of such a mission, it was not possible to entertain dirty things like sleeping around nor absconding to look for mbanje, kachasu or beer. 

So they remained disciplined; chavakanga vavinga chakanga chakakurisisa and ZANU kept them focused on it, they were liberation forces.

So everything was military; their commanders were fully trained ZANLA, and so they trained the minds of the children as well. 

Drills were done daily, hard work on the fields, in the carpentry shop, in the sewing room, building their own barracks, benches and tables using reed, was the order of the day. 

So it is easy to understand; our children had purpose. They were raised to be responsible at the highest level, to be a force to liberate their own land.

So we sailed through and brought those children home and built the ZIMFEP schools together with the children from ZAPU schools. 

Nothing that is assailing Zimbabwean youths today was ever heard of in our schools; they had a mission and a purpose, to champion a new education system, to liberate the rest of the education system. 

They had lots of hardships; at the beginning the conditions were as harsh as during the liberation struggle but what kept them on track was their mission, their purpose and their discipline as ZANLA and ZIPRA cadres.

Zimbabwe’s children today have no mission; they have no sense of purpose. 

The revolutionary curriculum (1980-1989) sought to teach them who they are; that they are MaDzimbahwe and that their purpose is to take up the mantle from the freedom fighters and build us a great Zimbabwe. 

They were taught that they were heirs of this great, rich, excruciatingly beautiful country, a special edifice, with a rich heroic history. 

This curriculum was resisted so harshly it was disbanded so that our children would never know that they are heirs to Zimbabwe and its untold riches. 

Kuti vasave nharirire dzenyika, kuti pasave neanovhunza mbavha kuti munotorerei upfumi hwedu. 

Which is precisely what the West wanted; now these children are wallowing in debauchery, be it sex or drugs. No human can live without a purpose, the internal force must focus on something; if there is a void, then all kinds of trash fill the void.

There was a categorical rejection of the liberation ethos, of education with production because it would fulfill what each fighter prayed and fought for with all their force: Tinoda Zimbabwe neupfumi hwayo hwose.

Education with production would not 

only teach the youngsters that they are heirs to Zimbabwe, but would also teach them how to harness the nation’s resources as producers who own the means of production, not as tools to assist some capitalist to exploit the wealth of the

 land. 

And for this correctness, Education with Production had to be relegated to the periphery, denying the heirs of Zimbabwe their rightful place in the land.

Now it is chaotic; thousands graduate from high school to nowhere and nothing. They have no purpose, neither have we taught them discipline. They are idle spirits and hungry bodies, and it is a nightmare. 

We tried vanaKaguvi Training Centre but all sorts of vile things were said about this special type of institution and children were shooed away from the assistance they might have received from these institutions.

In the early 1980s, Dzingai Mutumbuka warned:

“The imperialist have diluted our rich cultural heritage by way of films, literature, mass media, schools and doctrinaire dogma. These have plunged our nation into a morass of emotional and spiritual confusion. They believe the Western culture is right and ours is wrong and uncivilised.”

There it is. 

When Dr Mutumbuka said this, it sounded farfetched but now the chickens have come home to roost. The children have become zombies. 

We have religiously paid DSTV, we have religiously availed our children with phones as well as money for airtime and bundles so that they can ‘feast’ their eyes and hearts on the ways of the West. 

Even the poorest among us have spent every penny to make this possible. 

Ensuring that all the vices our culture rejects — prostitution, drunkenness, all manner of waywardness, crimes of passion, murder and theft, disrespect of elders and selfishness, among many more vices — are the most common themes the children gloat over day and night. 

What we don’t want to acknowledge is that when children watch such over and over again, they are vicariously living out this and corrupting themselves. 

Whenever opportunity presents itself, therefore, they go into it head first and perish. 

It is our doing, no-one should cry foul. 

We are complicit in the destruction of Zimbabwe’s heirs.

We have taught our children to denigrate our rich cultural heritage as Dr Mutumbuka said almost 40 years ago. 

We have taught them to reject that:

Musikavanhu and His ways are sacred

Adultery and promiscuity is anathema in the land of our fathers

Nhaka haitengeswi, unofa

Life is sacred, you do not kill, you are not to be cruel

Tiri vanhu, unhu is what defines us and ensconces us with Musikavanhu

And so we have thrown all this out of the window, and so Murenga’s children, whom you have taught Murenga is a fable, are now lost in a morass of aimlessness and juvenile vices which are dissipating their intellectual, moral and physical strength which they should be using to build us a Great Zimbabwe in the footsteps of their heroic Chimurenga predecessors but we have stolen this great historic moment from them.

It is what Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa has been fighting against; loss of culture, loss of values and the devastating effects on our youths.

ZANU PF has not failed; the edifice waged the struggle nenzira dzamasoja and succeeded, but we did not accept nzira dzamasoja, so we failed the children. 

We have chosen to image our children after the West. We have rejected that the ethos which liberated this land is the very one which can build it, it cannot be built by the ethos of those who once enslaved it.

The way forward is clear, it is up to us to choose correctly. 

Aluta continua!