IT is not only strange, but sinister that when you teach children the truth it is despised and demonised as indoctrination, but when you lie to them you are showered with accolades.
When you tell children that Zimbabwe is their country;
When you tell them everything that is in Zimbabwe is theirs;
When you tell them their fellow Zimbabweans suffered and died so that their beloved country would be theirs once again, so that Zimbabwe and all its wealth becomes theirs once again;
When you tell them that children as young as they are also fought for the liberation of the country and that they the children of Zimbabwe today have an equal duty to love, cherish and to defend their country Zimbabwe with their very lives if necessary;
When you tell children that Zimbabwe is their only home, God-given and in alienable;
When you tell them we are a people to walk tall because in history we have made a difference by defending the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of the human person.
When we tell the children all this, it is said we are indoctrinating them, we are politicising education.
If we dignify this demonisation of the truth in order to be admitted to the halls of fame of our enemies, indeed we are sacrificing our heritage inorder to be accepted by our enemies, in that case we are light miles away from what we are worth.
When writers of children’s textbooks remain silent about the liberation struggle, and are silent about the brutal takeover of our country by the British;
When others shred books that are written about the struggle that gave birth to Zimbabwe;
When writers of children’s textbooks gloss over the existence of many rivers and dams in Zimbabwe and instead give details about a little white boy who fishes salmon in Scotland;
When white writers persist in pairing little black boys and girls with little white boys and girls in order to depict the blacks as always disadvantaged and the whites as permanently privileged;
When writers insist on teaching Zimbabwean children about life in Glasgow down to the plan of family houses in that city;
When academics are renowned for coming up with an educational blueprint for Zimbabwe which does not have the slightest reference to our liberation struggle and the deep rooted Zimbabwean values that drove this liberation struggle and led it to its triumph;
When those in decision making positions insist that the liberation struggle never thought seriously about the education of Zimbabwe’s children;
When all this happens and it is all said to be normal, it is said to be true education, when all this happens and it is ratified unreservedly then we are in deep trouble as a nation and there is need to have very serious introspection because this depth of derailment threatens our very existence as a nation.
When Americans and their Western allies teach their children that they are the greatest people in the world, that they have democratic values that are the standard everyone in the world is judged by, when they claim that they are led by truth and justice, when they claim that they are the best the whole word should emulate and we take this and teach it our children wholesale, then it is tragic indeed.
If we teach this to our children as gospel truth instead of teaching them to interrogate some very critical issues then we are not honest to our children and to Zimbabwe:
1. On what grounds did they give moral and material support to the brutal, racist colonial regime of Rhodesia?
2. Were they among those who sent shipments of poisoned food and other goods to the liberation fighters?
3. Why is it that they demonise a leader who is loved by his people?
4. Why is it that they prefer that a handful of whites own most of the best land in the country while the black majority starve for land of their ancestors which was liberated by the blood of thousands of its sons and daughters
5. Why is that they are involved in plans to depose our constitutionally elected President?
6. Why is it that they went to Iraq and killed the President of a country and left the country in such a state of disintegration that so many die each day?
7. Why is that they lie to Zimbabweans and to the world that they never imposed unlawful evil sanctions on this country when it is there in black and white?
8. Why is it that they came to Africa and killed one of its most illustrious sons (Gaddafi) and left the country in total chaos kubva ipapo kuLybia, hakudyiwi rinopisa. The country is in a permanent state of turmoil?
9. Why are they unashamedly racist despite the so acclaimed superior morals and ethics?
10. Why are they not content to run their own affairs and leave the rest of the world to run their own affairs?
So we are so eager to teach our children that America and its European allies are their role models, their heroes, setting aside the teaching of the lives of Josiah Tongogara, Alfred Nikita Mangena, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, Samuel Parirenyatwa, Hebert Chitepo and all our precious heroes.
So if our children become expert at aping whites, what will we have achieved? Where will they take Zimbabwe?
It is important to give all those who died for our beautiful country, the best burials of all, but we also need to remember that the deepest consolation we can give them, the greatest honour we can give them, the greatest requittance we can give them for their sacrifices is to fulfill their desire for a free Zimbabwe, by teaching Zimbabwe’s children to be heirs of Zimbabwe, that is teaching them to walk in their footsteps.
This is what would compensate for the funeral wakes we never were able to hold for them, for the tears of their mothers, their families and relatives shed when they did not find them among those who returned home, for the goodbyes that were never said, for graveside prayers that were never said, for the coffins that were never bought and the flowers that never perfumed their graves and eulogies that were never sung.
This is the eternal light that will illuminate their unmarked graves always.
And we do not achieve this by teaching our children that they are not worthy of who they are, but if they are Europeans then they are people.
The comrades may not wait until we join them in heaven before they ask us what we have done to the children.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.