“…musavarega vachienda”
MATHIAS Mhere one of the country’s renowned gospel musician ensconces with you sweetly, as his beat entices your African love of dancing.
You might not even notice it’s gospel.
As you give in to the beat and you start dancing, the lyrics steal you away and before you know it, something so true becomes so clear to you.
“Patakabva Igipita
Rwendo takatangawo zvakanaka
Tikabva tapindawo murenje
Ndimo makatangirawo nyaya
Vana vakabarwa murenje ava
Ndivo vakashungurudza Moses”
“Musavarega vachienda vasina kutiratidza gwara,”
his breaking voice cries.
Cde Tongogara is gone, Mujuru, Muzenda, Mangena, Chitepo, Jason Moyo, Parirenyatwa, the list is long and soon we all comrades shall be gone.
Our enemies are crafty.
They calculated very well, they strategised well.
When they colonised us, they planned so well that they would never sing our song, neither would they allow us to sing our own song, but we were to sing the master’s song.
For 90 years in our schools it was only the master’s song that was permitted.
We only interrupted the master’s song in the first 10 years of our independence.
For the last 24 years, the colonial song has resumed and it’s even louder.
In 24 years you lose more than a generation, how many more generations of young, gifted and vibrant Zimbabweans shall we lose?
The enemy knows that the forces that fought to free Zimbabwe will soon clear by natural attrition and if they can hold on to colonial education in this our land for just a little while longer, in just a few more years it will be a done deed.
The liberation forces will be history, the legacy gone.
We are in the final moments and the enemy knows what is at stake, do we?
They have played their cards very well.
“Vana vakabarwa murenje, ndivo vakashurungudza Moses in 2008, zvikazovapo zvakadaro until 2013.
It was no accident, time is on the side of our enemy.
If we don’t rectify the situation as a matter of urgency we will lose the war.
We were colonised very systematically.
Our colonisers are masters of the art, not only of colonisation, but of slavery and other forms of subjugating other people.
Since they planned and executed the colonial process so systematically, nothing short of an equally systematic process of decolonisation can get us out of this mental bondage.
Unless we ensure that our children do not fall into this mental trap, we will have condemned them and future generations to colonial bondage.
We will have failed.
Where we come from as a civilised people and how we must pick up the pieces of our heritage and build for a ‘Great Zimbabwe’ are critical ingredients in the education of our children if we are to survive, which truths our children will not learn by osmosis.
Mental colonisation will not go away on its own.
Imperialism survives by destroying its host like the HIV and AIDS virus, and this virus will keep on its destructive path until it destroys the victim.
No-one yet knows how to kill the HIV and AIDS virus, but we know how to kill imperialism and its menacing tentacle of colonialism.
“Tevera matsimba…tevera matsimba,” Mhere exhorts, but we have allowed colonial education to erase our footprints, who we are, what we fought for.
Vanogotevera matsimba api, ani?
Matsimba avadzvanyiriri, avapambevhu ,avarungu ndiwo asara, ndiwo amutsidzirwa, ndiwo anoonekwa akatibha-a.
Fortified by the knowledge of who they are and what they stand for as a people, our children can resist anything, they shall triumph.
“Vachakutuka Hautukike
“Vachakushora Haushoreke,” Mhere advises.
If you know your song and can sing it no-one can derail you by singing other discordant songs because you will be well grounded, but we have not yet equipped our children to reject various forms of re-colonisation, in fact we are preparing them to hunger and crave these by educating them to be heirs of Britain and its European relatives, which our children can never be except as bonded slaves.
President Robert Mugabe, all our leaders of the Chimurenga wars of liberation, comrades, gone and present have that which burns in their hearts about this dear country, about each precious child that must carry the Zimbabwean flag, not just today, but until its hairs turn grey when they shall pass the mantle to their children and grandchildren.
All those dreams that fuelled our heroes along the rocky, thorny treacherous path of the struggle, surely it is worth more than a million dollars.
Tisavarega vachienda….we have to capture each precious gem and pass it on to our children for always.
“Pavaiungana vakareava, mapofu aiona, vakafa vaimuka”, the singer goes on.
That was the power and potency of the truth that the comrades carried to the people of Zimbabwe, that Zimbabwe is ours we have to get it back and build us a great nation in which all of us shall benefit from its riches.
Their message had the power to mobilise such revolutionary fervor among the masses such that they too owned the struggle and were prepared to die for their country.
Why is it that our education had no power over “vana vakazvarwa murenje vakazosvika pakushungurdza Moses.”
We never got through to them because the message we had for them was no longer the same as that of the freedom fighters.
Instead the enemies of Zimbabwe got through to them because we had alienated them.
Hatina kuva pagwara, hatina kuva paprogramme, so the enemy was able to convince them that ‘Igipita’ was better.
There is nothing innocent about education, it is the deadliest weapon to enslave or liberate.
The most innocent looking education is the deadliest, like cyanide colourless and tasteless, you will never know what killed you.
The colonial master defined Great Zimbabwe as: “old ruins which serve no useful purpose, the symbol of which is a queer bird which does nothing, but squat, gazing blankly into the distance as it slowly decays.”
That is how ‘innocent’ education is!
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.