THE damage to our children is occasioned by so many factors, these have to be addressed if meaningful education is to take place.
By the time children come to school, they have never been at peace for so long that what we can do with them is limited.
While children know that in our culture this is good, this is bad, what is reflected back to them is so contrary this is where the problem lies.
They feel hurt that they can never be normal yet they know what is normal, but so much militates against it.
When children see women who are improperly clad, they feel hurt, when they see males who behave indecently towards women, they do not feel normal, when females talk to males in a manner that suggest sexual promiscuity, children are violated.
This goes on and on, they see it everywhere and in the end they are not at peace.
Children are violated when they watch the Rhumba dance.
What that dance says is not correct for children and even for adults, its obscenity violates our moral code as Zimbabweans, it adds to the corrosion of our society and children are its weakest victims.
One of the most painful things to watch is children replicating these Rhumba dances as if they are made of rubber.
When it is like this, when it gets to this, how much can the teacher correct in class?
So children go all over the place, hear and see obscene things, and something does not work inside them.
Thus, to purport to correct violence against children, child sexual abuse by going around schools giving so-called sensitisation talks, putting up bill-boards and posters warning against these ills is insincere, it is dishonest.
These evils are nesting everywhere, but the nests are left undisturbed and they keep hatching and ensnaring the children wherever they are.
Who corrects the artist when they sing obscene songs and they are played everywhere and children are the silent victims, who cautions them when they put out drama and plays that make moral decadence palatable.
So there is everything everywhere that lowers the moral threshold of children making them easy prey for the sexual predators, while ‘sensitisation’ classes go on, and posters and bill-boards are put up.
The solution to this problem is not warning children that if an adult touches you like this report to the police or something like that.
By the time a child is touched like that it is too late, something has been wrong for too long for it to get to this stage.
Where is our cultural heritage that so much obscenity is on stage in broad day light and without shame?
Where can the children hide?
Our cultural heritage has everything in it that can protect our children and our future.
As Zimbabweans we have a very strict moral code, moral rectitude is fundamental to us, to our family life which is the foundation of our nation.
The conditions described above which nest child sexual abuse derive from the moral corrosion of our society by the decadence of the West, spawned among us by the colonial capitalism of the British armed robbers.
We are not helpless victims to this pernicious, virulent evil.
We can fight it and defeat it and fumigate ourselves of its influence.
We fought and defeated the British armed robbers politically, we are still waging the economic battle, but the socio-cultural battle if neglected can sink us.
The British armed robbers fought us socio-culturally in order to defeat our soul because a people without a soul are defenseless.
The solution does not lie in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the West telling us how to deal with violence against children, child sexual abuse because where they come from it is rampant and they have not been able to contain the situation, but more importantly, their mission is not different from that of their mother countries which is to subjugate Zimbabwe because it is so rich and adamant to keep its riches for its people.
These NGOs will never tell us to get rid of moral decadence in order to cure the situation because then we will actually solve the problem, thus they will fund everything else, but the destruction of the root cause, which is the cultural colonisation of our people.
The only protection for our children is for us to be who we are, “kuva vanhu vane nduramo.”
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.