THIS week, we focus on how we must craft our education particularly its curriculum to ensure that Zimbabwe’s children grow to love, cherish and appreciate their heritage Zimbabwe such that they own this heritage and become committed to work for its prosperity and to protect it with their very own lives if necessary.

This article follows the just ended series in which we devoted 15 articles to answer the question: ‘Are we teaching our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe?’

To answer this question, we began by tracing the history of education in Zimbabwe from 1899 to the end of the first decade of independence (1899 to 1989).

We analysed colonial education from its origins enshrined in its very first ordinances dating back to 1899, throughout the 90 years of colonial capitalism in which it faithfully pursued its goal of ensuring that colonialism took root in the hearts and minds of the indigenous people of Zimbabwe.

We discussed the response of the war of liberation to colonial education and highlighted the strategies formulated during the liberation struggle to counter the effects of colonial education, during the liberation struggle and in independent Zimbabwe as part of the transformative process.

The series revealed the strategies pursued to transform education after independence; how ZANU adopted a two pronged approach to transform education; through the structures of the Ministry of Education and Culture on the one hand and the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP) on the other. The veteran strategists knew that it is never wise to put your eggs in one basket, certainly not in such a crucial war.

ZIMFEP was to pursue and pilot the education programmes developed during the liberation struggle through its schools and tertiary institutions.

Its institutions were to be the nurseries from which these ideas would spread to the rest of the schools in the mainstream.

We also chronicled the launch of exciting curriculum programmes which championed the cause of the liberation struggle and laid the foundation for socialist transformation by the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU) of the Ministry of Education and Culture between 1980 and 1989.

We revealed how these programmes were torpedoed and discarded by forces inimical to the liberation struggle and the revolutionary transformation of Zimbabwe, how by the end of the first decade all the curriculum programmes that threatened capitalism were dead or were in a coma and the personnel that had worked on these discarded.

Thus by the end of the series we had answered the question: ‘Are we teaching our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe?’

Our answer was no, not for the last 24 years, but we did so for the first 10 years of independence’ at least.

This was our overall assessment.

This being our assessment, the inevitable question became; “Whither Zimbabwe?”

“Forward Zimbabwe!,” It is time for us to define for ourselves ‘How to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe.’

In defining this task, we have set for ourselves, we are not faced with the daunting task of inventing the wheel because this question has long been answered for Zimbabwe.

It was answered during the liberation struggle.

All we have to do is to go back to the silos of experiences from the struggle and be directed by the wisdom of the founding fathers of our Chimurenga.

When we examine the foundations of Zimbabwe, that is the liberation struggle, we find that education was not an after thought for the liberation movements.

Comrade Mutumbuka ZANU’s Secretary for Education and Culture underlined this when in 1978 he said:

“In the present context of the Zimbabwe Revolution, the armed struggle is the principal form of struggle.

“However, our struggle is not merely military, but rather a struggle on all fronts; political, diplomatic, educational etc.

“While our military front is the foundation of the struggle, we are well aware that our military successes can easily be reversed if we fail on other fronts.”

And for this reason, the liberation movements took time to deliberate and strategise on the kind of education that would champion the cause of the struggle during the struggle and in independent Zimbabwe.

Foremost in this regard was the creation of a new mentality which, imbued with the spirit of the struggle, would be divorced from the debilitating effects of colonialism.

Such a mentality would be the bastion of a new and revolutionary society.

Pursuant to this, a ZANU policy document noted:

“The imperialists 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 that Western culture is right and ours is wrong and uncivilised.”

Thus mental decolonisation was as much a priority as political and economic independence.

For these grave reasons, the transformation of the nation’s education was fundamental to the liberation movements.

This is why in 1980, the ruling party through its government, Ministry of Education and Culture gave the CDU a blank cheque to transform the curriculum of the nation’s schools.

We have already described how the CDU rose to the occasion and for 10 years fulfilled its mandate to transform curriculum in line with the nation’s revolutionary aspirations, but its magnificent work came to an abrupt end through sabotage.

Because these magnificent revolutionary programmes were sabotaged, today as we begin this new series: ‘How to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe’, we begin the task of completing the work that was interrupted more than 20 years ago; the task we began at the CDU in 1980 which was never completed.

We shall complete it now and we shall do so under the tutelage of the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe.

Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.