TO fully appreciate the significance of the recent events which brought a new dispensation in Zimbabwe’s history, we need to unpack the concept of ‘legacy’.
My simple reading of the English dictionary tells me that ‘legacy’ refers to ‘nhaka (Shona) or ‘ilifa’ (isiNdebele).
In other words, a legacy is ‘what one leaves behind’ when he/she passes/moves on.
The good things that we pride ourselves on were being replaced by G40 leaders with sleaze, corruption and greedy practices (maitiro) that were totally at variance with our ‘ubuntu/hunhu’.
So must we continue to remind the living and future generations of the significance of ‘Operation Restore Legacy’? Our gallant comrade, General Constantino Chiwenga and the military establishment said, of the G40 shenanigans, enough is enough!
They moved in decisively to restore the country’s liberation legacy.
They moved in to stop the rot in ZANU PF.
It was the armed forces’ turn to shout: ‘Stop it’!
It was a clear case of the ‘gun’ protecting the nation’s legacy of independence from political hijackers!
Those who say the military should have left the ‘politics’ alone are forgetting history.
Mgagao was another great moment in our history when the gun gave proper guidance to politics to protect the people’s interests.
Let us remind each other: Our military cadres are not just a ‘gun’, they are graduates of the ‘pungwe’ university, not only well grounded in military science but more importantly, in the ideology that won us our independence: Gwara rokuzadzikisa zvido zvavanhu, fulfilling the needs of the people.
Our legacy is that of our liberation struggles, the First and Second Chimurenga.
These struggles were inspired and led by our great ancestral spirit, Murenga Sororenzou.
His children and grand-children, including the great spirits of Chaminuka, Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mukwati and others, who led from the front.
Zimbabweans laid down their lives to free this great country.
Former President Robert Mugabe himself explained the origins of the G40.
They drew inspiration from former US President Barack Obama, who, in his 40s’ became the President of the US.
But Obama never forgot his history.
The G40 group in Zimbabwe sought to denigrate the country’s liberation history and even chose to ‘forget’ where we came from.
Dangerous thinking from people purporting to lead the nation!
When it became obvious that under G40 influence, some of us had lost contact with our legacy, that some among our leaders were denigrating our liberation ethos and attempting to re-write our so-recent liberation history, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces called the nation to order.
They could not watch as our umbilical links to our liberation struggle were being severed by a cabal that sought legitimacy in being too young to have participated in the liberation struggle.
At a time when thousands of our liberation war heroes are still alive and aspiring for the better life they fought for, the generation of pretenders in their 40s (age-wise) were rubbishing our liberation ethos and calling into question the legitimacy of our heroic armed struggle and victory against Western imperialism.
Both liberation wars, dubbed First and Second Chimurenga, were authorised by our great ancestral spirit, Murenga Sororenzou.
When the whites arrived with the intention of seizing control of our land, our ancestral godfather Murenga alerted his children of the impending danger.
Speaking from the cave, Murenga gave instructions through the curator of the great Njelele Shrine at Matobo Hills in what is now Matabeleland South Province.
The instructions were clear and direct: “Fight the invaders!” Murenga declared war on the British colonising forces.
He correctly identified that the invaders had superior weapons.
He cautioned against direct confrontation.
He advised use of hit-and-run tactics and ambushes. Murenga’s war tactics then came to be called ‘Chimurenga’, the name adopted for our liberation wars.
Essentially, Murenga’s tactics are typical guerilla tactics.
By the time our freedom-fighter comrades such as President Emmerson Mnangagwa of the Crocodile Gang and General Josiah Tongogara and Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo and others went to fight in the Second Chimurenga, the guerilla approach had already been defined.
So our legacy is essentially our history of struggle under the leadership of our great ancestral spirits such as Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chaminuka and others under the overall blessings of Musikavanhu, God the creator of all things.
May Zimbabwe’s legacy live forever!