By Dr Ireen Mahamba

WHEN we came back home from the war in 1980, I was assigned to the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Comrade Dzingai Mutumbuka was the Minister.
Three other comrades from the headquarters of the Education Department at Matenje Base in Mozambique were also assigned to the Ministry, two in the Culture Department, and another in Planning.
Some of the other comrades such as Stephen Nyengera, Josephat Nhundu, and John Machokoto continued to work with children from the schools we had ran in Mozambique.
The experiences from these schools were the basis of what later became the Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP).
The thinking behind the establishment of the Foundation for Education with Production was that the ideas about education which had been formulated and nurtured during the liberation struggle had to have a chance to develop and take root before they could spread to the rest of the schools in the country.
It was recognised that it would be an uphill task to implement these revolutionary ideas in the mainstream schools because the colonial ideas had flourished for decades and had taken root, and would be difficult to uproot.
We were aware that the whole school system, the teachers, the teaching and learning materials, and the structures had all been calibrated to fight everything we had fought for and planned to implement on independence.
We knew we were fighting such a powerful well entrenched system that in a direct confrontation with it, the probability was high that our ideas would be choked.
The strategy was therefore that the same comrades who had developed these revolutionary ideas and implemented them during the liberation struggle would continue to work together and pilot these ideas in new schools with the same pupils and students who had been cultured in this system during the liberation struggle and believed in it.
Once these ideas had taken root, they would then be introduced into the mainstream. Some of the schools were Mavhudzi in Nyazura, Rusununguko at Bromley, Fatima in Lupane, Nkululeko outside Kwekwe etc.
My assignment to the Ministry’s Curriculum Development Unit did not come too easily though, Rhodesia was still intact.
I had to be interviewed by the Public Service Ministry so that it could be ‘determined’ if I qualified to work in curriculum development.
It felt funny seated before this Rhodesian Chairman of the Public Service Commission. He asked about my qualifications and I told him that I had successfully completed three years of a four year Bachelor of Arts Degree and Concurrent Certificate in Education, and had deferred the fourth year to join the liberation struggle.
It was like I was speaking to a stone wall, I could tell he was just going through the motions, that my fate had already been decided.
So I was not surprised some time later to get a letter from the Public Service to say that I could join the Ministry as a substandard qualified officer; that was my designation when I joined the Curriculum Development Unit.
But that was the least of my worries, what I was pleased about, what I was jubilant about was that I had still gone through to join the Ministry and could now do what I was dying to do, what we had promised each other we would do when we got home. So I was overjoyed that the battle had been won; to that extent yes!
My work in the Curriculum Development Unit got off to a good start because the officers who headed the two divisions were very supportive of the transformation of the curriculum. And so began my new work in Independent Zimbabwe.
I was immediately put in charge of primary school Social Studies and primary school English. Each subject team comprised two or three members.
My team mates were both black and white.
My most immediate task was to guide the teams in the analysis of school text books that were in use in schools in order to eliminate those that were inimical to our selfhood as a people, those that were antagonistic to our liberation and independence.
Among the books we evaluated was one Social Studies text book published by College Press, I don’t remember the title any longer.
This book depicted Nehanda and Kaguvi as villains but what angered most was the portrayal of Nehanda as being so evil and that her most outstanding achievement was overseeing the murder of a defenceless white man.
That book was immediately removed from the list of books the Ministry approved for use in Zimbabwean schools.
The Longman Day By Day English Course had its own problems.
It was so Eurocentric that Zimbabwean children would never be able to recognise themselves in its content. So this too was discontinued.
Another problem that dominated in some of the other English readers was their class orientation. The stories the children had to read were mostly about the haves and not about the lives of ordinary Zimbabwean children.
They were mostly about the rich; those who drove to the lake or dam for fishing, those who spent the weekend at their uncle’s farm, whose uncles owned supermarkets and who on their birthdays would get presents such as bicycles.
In the 1980’s it was not the majority of the children who could find themselves in this category; not even today would this be a reflection of the lives of the majority of Zimbabwean children.
It was not all the books with problems that were discontinued, sometimes the offending sections were highlighted so the publisher could make some corrections and resubmit for approval.
Of course these were interim measures; ultimately we were supposed to write our own teaching and learning materials that were tailored to the goals we upheld.
Our position was that each child should be able to recognise themselves in what they read, in what they are learning because once they can sing their song in the process of learning, they are ready to go.
We were looking for moral, ethical and aesthetic attitudes, values and feelings that said it is correct to be African and proudly so, that this land belongs to the Africans first and foremost, and that it is Africans who are heirs to the Zimbabwean throne, that everything in Zimbabwe belongs to them, and that therefore those who challenge our socio-cultural, economic and political sovereignty are our enemies. We were looking for that which promotes justice and equality for all regardless of gender, race or creed.
But it would take a long, long time. Things didn’t turn out quite that way.
Dr Ireen Mahamba holds a PhD from Harvard University in the USA. She now works as a consultant.