HomeOld_PostsInvent games to honour our culture...our children programmed to do evil

Invent games to honour our culture…our children programmed to do evil

Published on

By Farai Mungoshi

ONE of the biggest mistakes we make as parents and grown-ups is to assume that we know everything about our children.
We find it hard to believe any bad reports about them because we prefer to believe we are raising little angels: “Wangu mwana haadaro.”
One of the hardest things to believe or accept for a person who is convinced that he/she is raising a child in the right manner, and by that I mean one who believes that he/she is raising a child according to the ways of our fathers and forefathers is to agree to bad reports about his/her children by neighbours or teachers at school.
Why?
Just because we were raised according to ubuntu philosophies and beliefs or chivanhu chedu does not necessarily mean our children follow the same ways — no matter how much we try to teach them.
I, for one, find it very annoying whenever my 18-year-old son fails to say: “Makadii,” when greeting an elderly person in my presence.
But does that mean he wasn’t taught to say: ‘Makadii?’
Lately I have been hearing children from as young as two years old saying: “Ndiri bho.”
We either laugh at it or brush it off saying: “Mwana uyu akangwarisa,” when in actual fact we should be correcting that child there and then.
The truth is, we do not spend as much time with our children as we used to back in the old days when everybody stayed in the village.
Between school and work, there is little time to spend with our children, meaning we, the parents, are no longer their source of influence as humanity is influenced by the surroundings.
I started opening my eyes to some disturbing truths the moment I found out my children love hip hop music, just like me.
The difference is, today’s hip hop music is associated more with sex, women’s hips, drugs and alcohol unlike those days when they spoke about a woman’s beauty and her body as something sacred.
It is not just music, movies or television that influence, our children’s behaviour it is also the games they play.
Just the other day I was having a conversation with my sister on our way to the clinic with my nephew (12 years old and in Grade 6) and we were discussing the possibilities of how the HIV virus was used as a weapon to do away with blacks in Africa by Westerners.
We were talking about the common rumours that some condoms might have been shipped to Africa in the 1990s as aid, but carrying the virus, thereby increasing the infection rate of people in Africa.
My nephew, who was not feeling well that day, jumped into the conversation as usual and started talking about a video game he’d played called Plague Incorporated.
In order for me to get my message across to you clearly, dear reader, I have to quote his exact words as we were having this discussion. He said: “Sekuru, do you know that there is a game in which you are required to create a virus and infect people? If you manage to infect the whole world, then you win.”
I turned my head from starring at the road before me to my sister sitting beside me. She had the same look of shock and surprise.
My nephew continued with his story: “I started off by infecting Zimbabwe and then I moved on to Asia. That’s where I died because the Chinese had invented a cure.”
I looked at my sister and we both burst out laughing.
It sounded funny hearing a 12-year-old talk like that, but at the same time we both understood the depths of what he’d said.
Our children are being programmed, right before our very eyes, to do evil from within our own living rooms and when they act it out in reality and become villains, we start visiting n’angas and prophets looking for the source of the evil.
Why and how does a child that old think of even infecting his own country first?
That is apart from the fact that the video game had first asked him to create a virus.
When you think about it, you realise this is not just an ordinary game.
So I got a bit curious and I asked him why he’d infected Zimbabwe first and he said: “I don’t know.”
Well, if you ask me, I would say that after creating something, one has the tendency to test it on his surroundings first.
My nephew went on to say “Aagh sekuru, you are surprised! Didn’t you know that in the new ‘Call of Duty World War 2’ video game you can choose to be Hitler?”
My jaw dropped.
Hitler is said to have killed over six million Jews.
How and why would someone want to become like him, even in a video game?
Something sinister is going on and our children have been made part of it.
Pure evil is at play here and if we are not careful, we will end up just like the US with itsmass killings every other day.
Imagine a person who spends his whole day playing video games like Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a first person shooter video game. It is the fourth bestselling video game franchise and to date it has topped US$15 billion in sales, meaning that they are making money out of programming our minds to do evil.
It should not come as a surprise that America continues to experience mass killings every now and then.
Recently, when a gunman, Stephen Paddock, gunned down over 59 people in Las Vegas, US President Donald Trump responded by saying that the gunman was a sick and demented man — but records show that this man has no history of mental health problems.
Either he is a terrorist, or a product of American culture!
Calls for better fire arms control will not eradicate the problem as killing has already been implanted in people’s psyche through video games, television and movies.
But as for Zimbabwe, we still have a chance and it is not up to Government to ban or allow but for us as individuals within our family structures to advise and direct our children, so that they may know the value of human life.
We must invent our own games and folklore that honour our culture and traditions as a people.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

The contentious issue of race

 By Nthungo YaAfrika AS much as Africans would want to have closure to many of...

More like this

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading