WHEN we say that we Zimbabweans must write our own teaching and learning materials, when we lament that the Ministry of Education’s curriculum unit no longer produces the core teaching and learning materials for schools, and when we say that books for our children should be written by patriots, we are claiming and affirming a fundamental truth, that no nation is on auto-pilot, nations are driven by ideas and purposes that are drawn from their definitions of themselves.
Rational nations do not float around waiting to be driven hither and thither by any wind or wave, when that happens, that nation is on a suicide path.
When the indigenous people of a nation are not driving it, someone else is doing it and that is called colonialism.
When we insist that no trace of colonial mentality in whatever form should come into contact with our children, we are saying no contagion should come into contact with our children, we are being very patriotic.
Zimbabwe is not a free for all to pilfer and contaminate, it has a pristine destination and purpose.When scholars from America and the West label Soviet and Chinese education as totalitarian, and moribund, they are being defensive of their own national agendas, they are protecting their children from societies that are their anti-thesis – they are protecting themselves from exposure to too much light, because when that happens darkness flies and those that are accustomed to darkness are afraid of being blinded.
They never tell their children how the ‘moribund’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘indoctrinating’, education was able to catapult the Soviet Union from extreme backwardness in science and technology to being the first to land a man on the moon, before those that are supposed to have better education systems, before those of the West could do so. They never tell their children in America, how come they have borrowed money from China to the tune of trillions, they don’t tell their children what it is that the Chinese are doing right.
We do not apologise for striving to do our own thing, to construct a society of our own design, by means we think best, we are only being patriotic and that, no-one can take away from us, it is our sovereign right.
 It is our national vision that drives us to be extremely vigilant against foreign contamination, particularly colonial and neo-colonial contamination.
It is the vision of a society that has its foundation in a heroic liberation struggle, the vision of a society that came into being because thousands willingly sacrificed their lives for the sake of justice and equality under sovereign rule, for all Zimbabweans,that behooves us to be faithful to its ideals.
‘Yakazvarwa nemoto weChimurenga
Neropa zhinji ramagamba
Tiidzivirire kumhandu dzose’
This is the compass for what should be in the school syllabi, in the learner and teacher guides, in the textbooks for our schools, colleges and universities.
It says what we should teach in the languages, history, science and technology, economics … in all disciplines.
What are the attitudes, values and beliefs that underpin this vision, that drive this vision? Those are the beliefs, values, attitudes and feelings that should underpin every syllabus, every single teacher and pupil guide, every textbook, every learning and teaching aid.
To refrain from stating exactly what should be taught our children as per our national vision is to say, let what the colonialist left in place continue to rule us, it is to say let us stay where the British left us, and where they still beckon us to be this day, it is to say, zvakanaka zvakadaro as it was under colonial rule.
America and the West have never made mistakes, they do not teach their children ‘communism’, their pseudonym for socialism, except to denigrate it so much that the children hate it.
They understand the potency of its superiority and they fight it with all they have, vanoita sechipembere chaona moto, it stumps it out until there is no trace. They trust that this way they will survive … perhaps.
Is it not amazing how comfortable we are with colonialism in our classrooms, with the fire that destroyed our house not so long ago, the fire that was only put out by the sacrifice of thousands of our lives?
The fire was put out, but the ashes are still smouldering, a little oil, a little petrol can ignite and blow the flames sky high, we have only just buried the so-called GNU… is it so long ago? The first premise of any curriculum therefore is the nation’s vision, the political, economic and socio-cultural definition of a nation and the goals and purposes that derive from it, the ideological identity of a nation, the who we are, what we are, what we want to achieve and what we want to mature to be.
The moment there is hesitation in defining faithfulness and allegiance to this vision, in that moment there is hesitation to defend the nation, a lack of commitment to eliminate the plague that once consumed the nation.
The moment there is accommodation of the still colonial syllabi, books…in that moment we are harbouring vipers that will not hesitate to strike and kill once they get an opportunity and when that happens, we are culpable.
History will not absolve us.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.