MOST times it is amazing the lengths to which we go to hide from our children the truth about colonialism in our land.
What is totally incredible is our refusal to teach our children the truth about this dark period of our history so that they can be free from the psyche fashioned over the last 100 years which says that there is something special about whiteness.
This psyche is in trepidation to accept that when the British came to Zimbabwe in 1890, they were a band of armed robbers.
Mostly this psyche makes it unacceptable to call them such.
It is not the majority among those responsible for the education of our children who would dare call them such.
But if they were not a band of armed robbers what were they?
Certainly they were not traders, nor are they our relatives, so by what magic did they assume ownership and control over our land, our wealth and even ourselves?
To come and say if I fight you for what is yours and you lose then I own everything you have, yourself included, how is that lawful?
How is that different from a robber who breaks into your home, overpowers you and gets away with everything you own?
How is it different from the thief who steals the papers to your house, forges your name and signature and assumes ownership of your property?
But then why this trepidation about calling a spade a spade?
There is a psyche of the superiority and purity of whiteness that makes many among us only too ready to exonerate them of the most atrocious crimes against the indigenous people of Zimbabwe.
But is it not true that they murdered thousands of Zimbabweans in 1893-94, in 1896-7, and throughout our war of liberation until independence.
Were those just wars, or they were wars of pillage and looting and our people were killed and maimed because they said, ‘no, Zimbabwe is ours, not yours, we will fight you’.
The immorality of killing someone in order to get what they own is ensconced in the words murder and theft.
Both are crimes punishable by law.
Those who fight armed robbers are on the side of the law.
It is excruciating that we still house our children in schools called Cecil John Rhodes (CJR); the leader of the armed bandits who invaded our country, David Livingstone; the one who ‘discovered’ the Victoria Falls because there were no people before he saw the Falls.
There was just wildlife and you do not credit wildlife for seeing something before you do, Allan Wilson complete with the antelope horns.
So nothing so evil, so cruel was ever done to the people of Zimbabwe by these whites?
But then why did we fight the war of liberation?
Why did so many suffer and die if nothing so terribly evil ever happened?
The children who were bombed in camp schools at Nyadzonia and Chimoio in Mozambique and Solwezi in Zambia died singing:
“But before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free.”
Are we resonating with their song when we still do this to the children of Zimbabwe?
Why are we giving our children the names of those who murdered their grandfathers?
People are not being asked to go back into the bush and experience the hunger, thirst, disease, injuries, and the painful deaths from multiple shrapnel entering your body and causing indescribable agony.
People are only being asked to say this is what happened so that our children can be freed from a slavery that has already been defeated, so that children are liberated from a psyche that continues to enslave them even after the slavery was ended in the most costly manner.
They are being asked to say this in the comfort of their offices, classrooms, lecture halls, on full stomachs and nicely clothed. Is that too much to ask?
Who is going to shed tears over the forefathers who were brutally murdered and injured in 1893-4, 1896-7, 1966, 1976, 1977, 1978 and in-between, throughout the armed struggle.
These things happened, they are there, they cannot rest until our children are taught about them in full and they are able to come to terms with their history.
This history will not rest until justice is done to it, and the children will not rest until they come face to face with this reality, until they know it in its entirety and they know and accept that this evil of a most cruel nature happened to their people. Without this they cannot be at peace.
It will continue to haunt them and that is not fair for it is their right to be at peace.
We exhibit this colonial psyche when we teach history as hard, dry facts?
But what are hard dry facts?
History is about human beings who have feelings, emotions, who are flesh and blood, who cry when they are hurt, who bleed when they are injured.
So how does history become hard dry facts?
People are not inanimate.
King Lobengula’s men who were injured and killed by Rhodes and Jameson suffered and died painful deaths, they experienced agony.
They were husbands, fathers, brothers, nephews, cousins, who had people who loved them, who grieved over their loss, who were hurt by their injuries; some of the injuries entailed permanent loss of limbs.
They were family men with families to take care of, there was so much grief and sorrow.
And so when they die in thousands, how many more thousands bleed, how many are bereft, how many orphans, how much sadness, how much pain and sorrow?
This is what it costs.
People are not just a statistic, they are living beings who have multiple ties to so many other people.
We cannot sweep colonialism under the carpet nor should we whitewash it.
It was a most cruel, evil thing that happened to our people, neither can we reduce it to dry facts and figures.
This empiricist approach to history only serves those who want to hide the truth in order to alienate others from reality.
The Jews never forget to remember the holocaust.
Every year that passes, they remember what happened.
It helps to exorcise the pain and it is insurance against history being repeated.
The children of Zimbabwe are burdened, let us end this travesty, let us tell them the truth and they will be at peace.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.