IN his reference to ZANU PF landslide victory in the July 31 election, President Robert Mugabe expressed wonder at how it seems those black Africans expected to have been enlightened by education are those who sell out.

They are the ones less defensive of African sovereignty.

And when one comes to think of it, the irrefutable truth is that in the case of Zimbabwe, it is indeed the educated elite who constituted the most spirited illegal regime-change agents.

It is them who manned regime-change non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

It is them who crafted the illegal sanctions regime and provided the intelligence to make it more harmful to their own livelihoods and future.

The president’s observations were as true as they were disturbing.

One was forced to wonder kuti saka is education bad?

The answer came to me in a story told by my late mother around the kitchen fire in my childhood.

She told us that a wily lion sent out word for the animals of the wild to visit him in his den because he was sick.

And when the animals entered the den, he killed them and ate them without putting in any effort.

Mbizi, Mhara, Nyati, Njiri among others all came, were invited inside and all met the same fate.

But, when Tsuro’s turn came, she enquired from the threshold kuti: “Makadiiko Changamire?”

And Shumba replied: “Please come in.

“You are welcome.

“I am too sick to come out.”

But Tsuro would not come in.

She said: “The voice I hear is not a patient’s voice.

“And all the footprints I see are coming in.

“None are coming out.

“How come?

My mother said: “Tsuro survived because she was not careless.

“Tsuro survived because she made a correct reading of the story around the mouth of the cave.

“The footprints told a story, and it was a story of ignorance, recklessness and death.

“The first animal to be killed left a warning which the second victim did not read in his own interests, but read in the wily lion’s interests.

“The first animal pitied the wily lion for being sick.

“He did not pity the victim.

“And the third animal did not read the story left by the second and history kept repeating itself with the same tragic result.”

My mother looked serious when she advised: “Chakachenjedza ndechakatanga” (The first error was the warning).

She said: “Never take your history for granted.”

And again she advised: “Never read history for its own sake.

“Read it in your own interests.”

She said: “The fact that all animal footprints were going into the cave was in the lion’s interests.

“But, the fact that no footprints were coming out was not in the interests of the animals that sympathised with, and went in to see the lion.”

 She said: “Kana Mwari vemuBhaibheri chaivo vakati vanhu vangu vapera nekushaya zivo.”

In retrospect, as I listened to the president, I thought that when African education becomes a form of suicide, or does not translate to survival, then the problem must lie with Africans just reading books for their own sake and not as a means to unlock the human potential to master their environment in order to prosper and survive all adversity.

In essence, the problem lies in content or curriculum.

Education must serve collective historical national interests.

It must answer the question: What can man be?

And, in retrospect I recognise a very curious analogy between education and computer software.

I am thinking that education is indeed a form of software that must carry the designer’s objectives.

And, I think that just like it is prudent that anyone installing software in a computer must be wary of hackers, it is also in the interests of anyone the education of a nation’s children to be wary of political, economic, cultural and religious hackers who design and deploy racist viruses to sabotage good intentions.

In Africa, those responsible for designing curricula must be wary of racist neo-colonial hackers motivated by regime-change agendas.

And, in Zimbabwe, this almost came to pass when the Rhodesian David Coltart served as Minister of Education even when it was known that he had defended Rhodesian apartheid, had crafted ZDERA and was pining for the return to racist Rhodesia.

Like Malcom X stated that only a fool will let his children be educated by his enemy, the Coltart era left the folly and puppet nature of the MDC was not left in doubt.

Coltart prefaced every book given to primary and secondary school children with a recommendation for them to thank all the countries that had imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe for sponsoring their education.

He did not tell Zimbabwean children that it was those same countries that had incapacitated their parents from buying them books of their choice.

And, for the future of Zimbabwe, what this experience means is that when our children emerge from university and start defending Anglo-American interests in Zimbabwe, then we must know that the hackers have been there.

When the destitute children of dispossessed men defend the property rights of people who killed their parents in order to be in possession of those properties, then we must know that the hackers have been there.