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Must we forget the liberation struggle?

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‘LET us fight and rebuild Zimbabwe’ was the motto on the ZANU logo during the liberation struggle.
I have no recollection of this motto.
I am not sure whether I had come across it prior to my reading Agrippa Mutambara’s biography, The Rebel in Me.
On the last page is a letter from ZANU President, Robert Mugabe to Agrippa Mutambara, who was then ZANU Chief Representative to Ethiopia.
The motto stands prominently on the ZANU letter head.
The motto reminded me of Dangamvura in Mutare soon after independence.
The township reverberated to stereo sounds celebrating new found freedom.
A popular tune then, I think from the Pied Pipers, had lyrics that went like this, ‘Let us forget the past and rebuild Zimbabwe’.
The song was a hit in the township and probably on national radio as well.
I can imagine the dilemma for the demobilised freedom fighters; to rebuild Zimbabwe they had to forget the past, yet months before they had been counselled that to rebuild Zimbabwe they had to fight!
Which past could the Pied Pipers have been, clearly innocently, urging us to forget in the independence euphoria?
Most likely this past referred to the struggle, its memories and resultant anger.
That past included the Nyadzonia, Chimoio and Tembwe massacres.
The late Eddison Zvobgo shed tears on national television as he recounted the barbarity of the attack on Nyadzonia. The latter two (Chimoio and Tembwe) were described soon after the events by President Robert Mugabe as: “The naked attack on civilians including children and sick persons is a gross violation of international rules of war, especially of the Geneva Convention.
“Their blood, like the blood of those massacred at Nyadzonia, Dabwa and numerous other places shall forever water the seed of our revolution and inspire us all to fight with greater resolve than before so the enemy can be completely annihilated and our revolutionary goals achieved.”
Could we possibly forget such beacons to our freedom march?
The massacres predate the arrival of the war in Unyetu.
First village pungwe must have been December 1977 just a couple of weeks after the Chimoio attack. A couple of months later, in 1978, the war was already a seasoned campaign in the village.
Its ferocity was consistent with the ZANU declaration of 1978 as the ‘Year of the People’ (Gore reVanhu).
Political re-orientation was swift and a village war administration was put in place.
By 1979, ZANU’s ‘Year of the People’s Storm’, Unyetu was a liberated zone.
The rivers of blood at Nyadzonia and Chimoio had not been in vain.
That memory of the struggle and Rhodesian atrocities had inspired revolutionary fervor.
By the end of 1979, Ian Smith had had enough of the people’s storm and on his knees went to Lancaster House for an honourable surrender.
He got a good…much better deal.
In the subsequent elections ZANU PF won a landslide victory and Prime Minister-elect, Cde Robert Mugabe, delivered a speech that pleasantly shocked imperialist capitals, the famous Reconciliation Speech, which included these lines: “I urge you, whether you are black or white, to join me in a new pledge to forget our grim past, forgive others and forget.
“Join hands in a new amity and together as Zimbabweans trample upon racialism, tribalism and regionalism and work hard to reconstruct and rehabilitate our society as we reinvigorate our economic machinery.”
It was a speech that Rhodesians mistook to mean it was business as usual.
They fortified racism, especially on the economic front. They engaged in sabotage as a pastime.
Within a short space of time after independence, the country was in flames on account of racial, tribal and regional ‘isms’.
The madness only ended in 1987 with the signing of the Unity Accord between ZANU PF and PF ZAPU. The resultant ZANU PF motto reads ‘Unity, Peace and Development’.
What has become of the fight?
Do we still encourage fellow comrades to forget the past?
Do we seek to develop a rebuilt Zimbabwe?
Freedom fighters’ biographies that are being churned out are asking these and many more questions.
Felix Muchemwa and Agrippa Mutambara have between them sought to make us live and relive the Chimoio horror.
To the many who have not been exposed to these moving accounts of Rhodesian genocide, how do they forget, let alone forgive that which they don’t know?
Rhodesians are busy writing books that celebrate their gallantry at Chimoio and Nyadzonia.
How do you forgive unrepentant racists?
To deny the holocaust is crime against humanity; to deny Rhodesian war genocide is a sign of progressiveness?
Please!
Their children are in schools that follow a curriculum that contests the struggle narratives.
These people we call ‘nhinhi’ in Shona.
Thank you Mutambara, thank you Muchemwa, you have ensured that the stories of your fellow comrades are not forgotten.
Your accounts left me teary and angry.
I cannot forgive these heinous crimes until the perpetrators and their progeny acknowledge their vicarious culpability.
To our creative artistes, let us have a happy ending to this sad chapter of our history.
Create movies in which we exact revenge.
Maybe then we can celebrate.

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