HomeOld_Posts‘Let’s guard our cultural and liberation values’

‘Let’s guard our cultural and liberation values’

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EVENTS of the past weeks got everyone talking.
There is an old saying that amid the pomp and fanfare, there are those ‘who hunt with the hounds and run with the hares’.
A small crowd of whites were celebrating the new Zimbabwe at an exclusive whites-only club in Bulawayo.
I was let in because they said it was a ‘historical day’ for Zimbabwe.
But what got me thinking is whether these so-called celebrations were really genuine, especially from the same whites who colonised Zimbabwe.
While celebrating the new era, there is no doubt, that as Zimbabweans, we are still involved in a devastating and energy-sapping struggle, to re-shape and remove the remnants of the colonialism.
The colonial mentality that forced us to renounce our experiences, history, indigenous knowledge systems, beliefs, values and age old traditions as backward, must be dealt with.
As if our liberation struggle was not enough, we have to fight neo-colonial Western-sponsored mass media that survives by marketing value systems which are not only foreign, but are also a source of our self-denial and total underestimation.
It is common knowledge, that it is the same white community, who systematically educated us in the last century to be ‘civilised’ as not to raise a finger in protest against those who exploited and expropriated our strategic minerals like gold, iron, copper, and chrome.
They are the same people, who mercilessly harvested our dams, obliterated our wildlife through sport hunting, cut down our prime timber for their houses and furniture and legislated against our drought-resistant crops and livestock.
And ‘pretendedly’, they have forgotten their economic crimes, and are now coming back to tell us that to be ‘developed’, we have to sell them our best fruits, coffee, tea, grain, cotton and beef.
They have the audacity to tell us how to use our natural resources.
And we are told, we have to invite them to come and invest in our country, yet the last time they came (colonised us), they did so without any invitation.
We had to fight to regain our independence and in the process, we lost thousands of our sons and daughters.
Now, we are time-and-again, told to look West, if we want ‘development’.
The West chooses to ‘forget’ that we are ‘underdeveloped’ because they looted our natural resources.
Surely, we must ask what has changed when our former colonisers, all of a sudden, pretend to love us.
Let’s be wary as we ‘embrace’ these former colonialists and welcome the new order and Government.
Let’s bear in mind, that the so-called developed countries of the West have suddenly woken up to a critical realisation that the destruction of culture was the biggest threat to peace and security.
When the British called for ‘going back to the basics’, they were calling for reaffirmation of the crucial role of traditions in human development.
We must also guard against the notion that once the destruction of values is allowed to dehumanise society, and once individualistic and materialistic ideology takes over, the very achievements attained by the liberation struggle become instruments of human destruction.
Zimbabwe is still fortunate to have retained those moral and spiritual values and customs which promote the centrality of the family institution and many social systems which guarantee the preservation of humanity, so let’s be wary.
Unless we guard against cultural subjugation and preserve our liberation war history, we will be doomed.

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