THE British armed robbers knew it was not going to be easy to colonise Zimbabwe so they decided they would churn out so much evil information no-one would ever be at peace in this land.
They took a lot of time to create a mindset which said ‘you should never be at peace with yourself because you were never meant to be anything in the first place’.
So when the liberation struggle began, this mindset had to be destroyed; so as the struggle began, education programmes began.
It was something so evil and so carefully crafted as to strip us of our self-esteem.
Normally when something like that happens, there is an opposite reaction inside; there is shock, disbelief, anger and frustration.
You want to fight and challenge this evil edifice imposed on you; it is the you in you, the inside you which says I am correct as I am, I am as worthy as any.
This sense of natural justice exists in each one of us; it is that which rises to the fore when each person is unjustly attacked, as we were by the British armed robbers.
It is this sense of special self in each of us which moved Mbuya Nehanda and her compatriots, armed with so little, to revolt against the British armed robbers in the First Chimurenga/Umvukela, and later in the Second Chimurenga.
When Mbuya Nehanda said her bones would ‘rise’, she did not refer to her physical person, but to her spirit that would continue to inspire and recruit a formidable force to rout the armed invaders, and she did.
It is this spiritual marrow in each of us which said, ‘I am and I am invincible’ which led to the struggle and fuelled it until final victory.
And this is the way children in schools during the struggle were taught.
This is the spirit which was nurtured during the struggle.
As long as this special force, this spiritual light burns in a person, in a people, they cannot be vanquished.
That is why the Vietnamese were never vanquished despite being victims of some of the worst atrocities in human history at the hands of the French and the Americans.
During the liberation struggle, things were so clear, the enemy had to be hit with the gun, but the mind had to be cleansed of the mentality so carefully crafted by the enemy, the mentality which said, ‘you are not human enough to be in charge of your own affairs’.
Education in the struggle was not a hobby or luxury for the faint-hearted.
It was a critical arm of the struggle, for it is the mind that directed the gun not the other way round.
So when Cde Sheba Tavarwisa opened the first ZANU school at Chifombo in Zambia in 1973, it was borne of a very clear purpose, a very well deliberated strategy by the leaders of the struggle to defeat the evil that had befallen us of being enslaved by a foreign race in the land of our birth.
Through the Commissariat Department and through the schools in the struggle, both ZANU and ZAPU relentlessly pursued cleansing of the minds, the construction of the mindset which said, ‘I am against the relentless forces of dispossession and enslavement which said: You are not’.
Is it not clear that unless the relentless cleansing of the mind is pursued, it will not be possible for us to transform the country our people liberated at such great expense?
For the liberation forces, the destruction of the colonial mentality was a fundamental part of the struggle.
Can we say in the last 36 years, we have made the destruction of this colonial edifice a fundamental part of the transformation of Zimbabwe?
During the struggle the children at crèche sang: “I have decided to follow ZANU, no more turning back.”
They were committed to the ZANU cause of liberating their country, proudly so; death, hunger, disease and all.
In school, on sack materials girls embroidered: ‘ZANLA girls take after Mbuya Nehanda’.
How many of our girl-children today can proudly embroider: ‘Zimbabwe girls take after Mbuya Nehanda’?
The school children dramatised that: ‘The people are invincible’, a play which held spell-bound delegates to the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Maputo in 1979.
Their plays dramatised African beauty and culture such as in their play ‘Black is Beautiful’.
How many of our children today proudly feel that black is beautiful, that it is precious to be African.
Their plays also criticised the sell-out antics of puppet Jeremiah Chirau and Abel Muzorewa.
Can our children today see through the antics of puppet Morgan Tsvangirai and his surrogate parents?
In the struggle the children learned that Zimbabwe is their country, that it is beautiful and rich and that it is wealthy because of the labour of the African people.
Do our children today respect that labour is the source of all wealth, of all human sustenance?
Do they appreciate that it is the labour of their people that built the Zimbabwe we have today?
Do they know the political economy of their country and do they know why so many of their people are so poor despite working so hard, despite the country being so richly endowed?
The children in the struggle knew and that is why they were ready to die for their precious country.
The wisdom of the founding fathers of Zimbabwe is what led Zimbabwe to its freedom and it is this which is necessary to bring to fruition the goals of the struggle.
As we celebrate the love and sacrifice of the great sons and daughters who suffered and died for the freedom of this great country, it is a call to arms, to destroy the colonial mental edifice.
Those who insist that Cambridge should examine our children are not confused or naïve.
They are pursuing precisely the same colonial goal of creating a mindset which says: ‘You are not worthy to be in charge of your affairs, but the British armed robbers are’.
The British armed robbers were re-grouping their forces after Tsvangirai’s crushing defeat by ZANU PF in July 2013 when Chatham House (October 2013) underlined that the education frontier is the only one that remains assailable, seeing that ZANU PF, with the solid support of the majority of Zimbabweans, is impregnable.
Happy Heroes’ Day!