By Pasipamire Nanhasi

THE first step in a series without precedence towards the emancipation of the African mind has begun at the Zimbabwe Heritage Trust (ZHT).
The ZHT led by Cde Pritchard Zhou has recalled to service, a group of researchers dubbed ‘Ubuntu Revival Group’ comprising of reputable and shrewd retired education officers from different cultural backgrounds to go down the deepest sea in search of Ubuntu.
The group’s mandate is to dig deep into Zimbabwe’s cultural past with a view to rebuild our lost identity as a people.
We need to go back to our ‘roots’ and connect with our cultural heritage which is arguably the finest in the world.
Besides being heavily endowed with the richest mineral resources (Heritage) in the world, Zimbabwe’s cultural heritage is envious to many peoples of the world.
It is a sea of wonders where the old and young people of diverse cultures are neatly interwoven into a barbed wire entanglement. You cannot break Zimbabwe for as long as this barbed wire entanglement made up of linkages from different cultures exist.
It is not a wonder therefore, that the Western powers first sought to destroy this impenetrable barbed wire entanglement before establishing colonial administration.
The clarion call, arguably Zimbabwe’s first comprehensive step by the ZHT for all the people of Zimbabwe to look back and connect with their cultural heritage has been made.
The cradle of humanity, initially comprising of four astute researchers from Manicaland, Masvingo and Mashonaland Central provinces has already started laying the foundation for the revival of Ubuntu or Hunhu hwedu.
The revival programme critically seeks to address the cultural distortions and imbalances created over a period spanning for five centuries.
In this period, African societies suffered humiliation and sustained denigration at the hands of Western imperialism and colonialism. The slave trade left African societies completely devastated and disoriented to the extent that normal life had virtually come to a standstill.
The subjugation of the vanquished societies followed hard on the heels of the slave trade as African societies were rounded up and put under colonial rule.
The role of the white men who first came into contact with the Africans in this part of the world was to completely erase the African memory using a wire brush.
This fractured the African mind, leaving it with scars and some bruises through which European values were encrypted into our minds.
With the new values now encrypted into the African mind, the stage for colonisation was set.
At the centre of European strategy for the colonisation of the African continent, were the Christian missionaries whose primary role was to prepare Africans for the so-called new and Western civilisation.
The missionaries were to take away the Africans from their spiritual world (VuMwari) into the new spiritual world of Western values.
One researcher in the ‘Ubuntu Revival Group’ Mr Machonesa made reference to Chaminuka (2001) and noted that the Shona people were presented as having a distorted humanity precisely because some Europeans were bent on undermining their culture in the name of civilisation.
He drew another noteworthy view from Tsenay Serequeberhan (1997) ,who defines Euro-centrism as a pervasive bias located in modernity’s self consciousness of itself which is grounded at its core in the metaphysical belief or idea that European existence is qualitatively superior to other forms of human life.
The logical conclusion from the foregoing discussion therefore is that, any attempt by the Africans to redeem their lost identity, dignity and humanity Ubuntu must of necessity seek to destroy the Euro-centric views of the African social and philosophical institutions.
It must be noted however, that the destruction of European values and philosophy alone will not take the Africans anywhere. Such destruction must be closely followed by the ‘revival’ and ‘restoration’ of the African socio-cultural and philosophical institutions.
Thus, November 12 2013 marked an important turning point not only in the war against cultural alienation and Westernisation by the ZHT, but also because it essentially follows after November 11 1965, a day when the colonial administration led by Ian Douglas Smith declared the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). The UDI gave the settler administration unlimited powers to annihilate the African culture in the then Rhodesia.
However, the profundity and originality of the African culture was such that it could not simply be erased from the face of planet earth just like that, the divine call to revive it has been on the tabernacle for a while now.
Many thanks to the ZHT for answering the call for its ‘revival’.
To announce the unfolding events of the impending ‘cultural revolution’, the Ubuntu Revival Group recently convened at the ZHT to give form and shape to the socio-cultural aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe and will continue to reflect in series through The Patriot, developments for the revival and restoration of our cultural identity, dignity and prosperity of the African race.