TO teach is to enable, to assist, to transform so that after some time, someone can make it on their own.
So when people still teach and no-one is able to make it on their own, when they are not able to look after themselves, then there is a problem, they have not been taught.
If people still stand by the street corner, selling cigarettes, air time, this and that, after several years of schooling, teaching has not taken place.
If teaching does not protect and engender self-respect, then it has not taken place. Self-respect is the first step in being human,in being cultured and it is culture that separates mankind from the rest of nature.
If it no longer matters where you relieve yourself,and any place can be a loo, even after several years of schooling, then teaching has not taken place. It means you went through school and came out unscathed.
Before anything else, humans have to be people, they have to be cultured. This is where it all starts, this is the beginning. If learning has taken place one should be self-respecting.
When teaching takes place, transformation takes place, the body which houses the self should display respect for this self. The presentation of this body, its state of cleanliness, the state of cleanliness of the clothes and the morality reflected by the total presentation of the person,represents the nature of that self whether it is cultured or not,that is, whether it is educated or not.
If after years of schooling the self remains so raw that cleanliness is not an issue and the bodily appearance does not reflect respect for itself or others then no learning has taken place, there are no moral, ethical, or aesthetic attitudes, values and feelings that have been learned.
It is not about poverty or riches. During the liberation struggle we had nothing. In the camps at the rear, there was no soap, no lotion, no vaseline, no hair oil, nothing.Taigeza neruredzo, when we could get it. The only thing that was there was the water in the rivers. We trooped there in the morning before the 4.00 a.m. parade, and in the evening after the 5.00 p.m. parade. Each person washed their body twice a day,everyday.
For clothing we relied on second hand donations mostly from the Scandinavian countries, though we never had sufficient clothing, the little we got we washed it until it was threadbare and without any soap. Our clothes were always clean. We ironed our clothes by folding them neatly and placing them between the grass mattresses and the bases and the pressure from our bodies would press them as we slept.
And, although we were in the bush, we did not use bushes as toilets. Wherever we settled, we dug toilets and enclosed them with grass thatch walls. Everything was clean and decent. If we were in transit or in some temporary settlements after some bombings, we used the cat system, which involved digging a hole into which you relieved yourself and then covering the hole with soil, and this was never inside the camps where we resided.
We did learn a lot during the liberation struggle and the first thing was self-respect. If one cannot respect themselves, how can they respect others, if one cannot clean their very own body, their clothing and be decent to themselves, how can they be decent to the next person, how can they be of service to the family, to the community and the nation.
If one does not mind or is comfortable wallowing in filthy environs then they have never learned anything in the years spent at school, they have not learned the first thing, which is self-respect, they have never become cultured.
This lack of culture is evident in the uncouthness, and ruffianism displayed in the youth of today. Uncouthness,ruffianism, lack of respect, kudherera nokutuka bears witness to the fact that no teaching ever took place.
Mbuya naSekuru are pushed out of the kombi so perilously they could be injured or killed as sometimes happens, they are scolded and ridiculed as they try to buy at the supermarket, sometimes a simple thing like not having small denominations of money is sufficient reason for them to be roasted and forced to buy goods they never intended to buy and which they cannot afford, they are forcefully loaded into buses against their will, they are coldly and mercilessly sent from office to office when they try to visit government ministries for assistance until they give up, they are shouted at when they visit the clinic or the hospital. No-one respects them when they queue for this or that service, they are jostled around with everybody else. And this happens not only to Mbuya naSekuru, but to most ordinary people. The so-called educated vanovaonesa ndondo.
This is not the behavior of educated people, this is not the behavior of cultured people. The genesis of this behavior is the unschooled self that does not respect itself.
The war of liberation succeeded nokuti kwaiva nenzira dzamasoja.
‘Taurai zvinetsika
Kuruzhinji rwevanhu
Kuti mass inzwisise
Zvakananga musangano
Tisaite choupombwe
Muhondo yeChimurenga…
If the comrades had behaved the way the youth behave today, no-one would have followed them, the war of liberation would not have been won by us.
Dziriponzira dzaMasoja dzokugara muno muZimbabwe yedu, but these have not been taught our children.
This is why they have no respect for their elders, vanotuka nokupopotera ugamba vachiti:
‘Makatumwa nani kundoisunungura?’
‘Endai munoisungirira payaiva yakasungirirwa tigonoisunungura isu’
Zvadaro, we do not win, Zimbabwe has no heirs.
Pane hunhu hwakakosha hwavanhu veZimbabwe hunozikanwa and this does not include hating and hurting your elders and your people, slandering those who have made you what you are, worshipping white foreigners, grandstanding and being overbearing, conceited, rude, crude, rough, selfish, and shameless among other vices.Tirivanhu vakarungama.
Ndihwo hunhu hwakazvara magamba akasunungura nyika yedu. No other culture did this for us, which is why our children have to be distilled in this culture.
They need to be taught the moral, ethical and aesthetic, attitudes, values and feelings that nurture self-respect, that make them people, that make them cultured, then they can respect others and serve them in a humane way.
Vana vedu vakasatanga vadzidziswa hunhu hunovaita kuti vave vanhu hazvina zvazvinobatsira kuvadzidzisa Maths, Economics, Physics or whatever,vanongoita maruffian anoponda vanhu mustreet kana vashaiwa mari, or criminal lawyers who see nothing wrong in selling their country or street girls who sell their bodies for cash and claim they are workers. Kudzidzisa munhu kumupa unhu.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.