HomeOld_PostsHow to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe: Part 21

How to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe: Part 21

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“Babylon system is the vampire
Sucking the children day by day
Sucking the blood of the sufferers
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth right now
Come on and tell the children the truth”
(Bob Marley)

YOU just wonder why one would bring to children stories about what might have happened during the liberation struggle when there are plenty of people in Zimbabwe who participated in the liberation struggle and have written about it or are available to tell their own stories.
Surely, if the purpose is to inform children about the liberation struggle, one would seek authentic sources especially when the hunger about what happened during the liberation is still so great.
It is an even greater cause of alarm when this fiction is so far from the truth.
We are not doing our children a favour when we don’t tell them the truth about what happened during the liberation struggle.
It is our duty to do so, and to do so accurately, because our children are heirs to this struggle.
Their fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and the rest of their fellow Zimbabweans fought in the war of liberation and for this reason, it is their duty, their obligation and their mission to protect this legacy by ensuring that the goals for which the struggle was fought are achieved.
Our children cannot carry out this task unless they know the truth.
They cannot make correct decisions if they are not accurately informed, neither can they be inspired by what is not true.
A passage extracted from Shimmer Chinodya’s novel, Harvest of Thorns, which Chinodya uses in an English Text Book for Form Three, Step Ahead, New Secondary English Book Three, published by Longman (2011), has so much that is so untrue about the liberation struggle, and as if that were not enough, the material also robs the children of their innocence.
The passage from Chinodya’s novel profiles a female combatant, ‘Ropa’, in a manner that typifies the way the enemies of the struggle characterise female combatants.
What they most want the world to believe about female combatants is that they were loose, just there to be used as sex objects by the male combatants, that they really were not combatants as such.
About this so-called ‘Ropa’, Chinodya writes:
“Her long fingers kneaded the boy’s head again, crushing him to her pelvis,” this little boy is one of her pupils as she is a teacher in the camp.
He also writes: “She fished into the front part of her dress, into the well of her breasts and there it was, a packet of cigarettes.
“She plucked one from the box, lit it with nervous hungry fingers and choked on it…”
This same ‘Ropa’ goes on to say to a male combatant she had met a few hours before, about another combatant:
“He wants me imagine?
“He is the one who bought me the cigarettes, but his wife is here in the camp.
“She trains women.
“I think she knows he’s after me, but she hasn’t said anything to me.”
About this same comrade she is telling that another ‘wants’ her, Chinodya writes:
“He felt urges of intimacy towards her…”
Here we have a female combatant who crushes the heads of little boys she teaches to her pelvis, who fishes cigarettes from the well of her breasts in front of her pupils and a male combatant she had just met, who is addicted to cigarettes, who speaks so casually about adultery with a married combatant to a male combatant.
Firstly, this kind of talk, this kind of language is unsuitable for Form Three students.
The attitudes, values and feelings engendered in this passage are inimical to our children growing up to be decent Zimbabweans and heirs of Zimbabwe.
They lower their moral threshold, making them vulnerable to so many other vices. We want our children to grow up with their innocence.
They do not have to be defrauded of their innocence by depraved minds.
If there are any of our children who unfortunately are teetering at the edge, we do not have to push them over and if some have already crossed the line, our classrooms must correct them, not fuel their fall into the abyss.
Again, this is not the profile of female combatants during the liberation struggle. We ZANLA girls were very proud of ourselves.
We did not leave everything behind in order to smoke cigarettes and avail ourselves to our male counterparts as sex objects.
Our motto was, “ZANLA girls take after Mbuya Nehanda!”
We were and still are proud daughters of Nehanda.
This is what was true about us, and she certainly would not have approved us smoking cigarettes and sleeping around.
We went to the liberation struggle for a very serious purpose, to fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe and we were prepared to pay the ultimate price.
If someone did not participate in the liberation struggle, fair and fine, but there is no need to insult those who did.
Chinodya dangerously misrepresents how combatants were organised during the war.
He talks of refugees and combatants as separate categories.
There was no demarcation between refugees and combatants.
There were holding camps where the majority stayed while they waited for their opportunity to be trained since resources were limited yes, but all were combatants.
All activities were geared for and were about the liberation struggle.
Ian Smith knew very well that all were combatants, that is why those at Nyadzonia were brutally massacred.
Such inaccurate writings we do not need.
This type of writing robs our children of the greatness and profundity of the liberation struggle.
It diminishes the dignity of the legacy they should proudly safeguard and it is a crime against these young ones and Zimbabwe.
It certainly does not help us to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe.
The passage is full of many other inaccuracies, but for now these shall suffice for this article.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.

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