IT is mischievous to purport that the children of Zimbabwe do not love their country and therefore would have to be compelled to salute the national flag as the NewsDay of a few days ago (June 12 2015) suggests.
It is natural for anyone to love themselves.
When children are born they love themselves, they love their parents, their siblings, their families, their communities and their country.
This is natural, what is abnormal is to hate one ‘self, one’s family, one’s community, one’s nation.
Self-hate is an abnormal psychological condition for which one should seek psychiatric help.
There is no rational basis for assuming that Zimbabwe’s children are abnormal.
Zimbabwe’s children have already proved that they love this country, they have done what many adults were never prepared to do and might still never do.
When this great land was under bondage to British armed robbers, they left the comfort of home and braved the forests, swollen rivers and enemy bullets to join the liberation war.
The children who left Zimbabwe for Mozambique and Zambia left to join the war of liberation, they were not refugees.
When they got to Mozambique and Zambia, they were disappointed to be told that those who were below 18 years could not be trained militarily, but had to go to school.
Those who were assigned to schools braved it like the soldiers they were, anxiously waiting for the day they would be old enough and their turn would come to train and go home to liberate their country.
Some could not wait, they still ran away to military camps so they could be trained though they kept being sent back to camp schools.
Young as they were, hard as it was, they were prepared to suffer and die for their beloved country.
Now that is the ‘greatest love’ and Zimbabwe’s children demonstrated that depth of love for this dear country.
‘They sang with their souls:
“Ropa rangu muchazoriona pasi pemureza!”
That is who they are, the children of Zimbabwe, they are heroes and that is a very precious truth about this country.
It happened, it is true and it will not go away.
There is therefore no need to craft a fallacial situation wherein the children of this country are no more the children of this country.
There is no need to create a non-existent crisis that the children of this country would have to be forced to salute the symbol of their nation.
It is mischievous and ridiculous.
If their compatriots were prepared to die for this land why claim falsely on their behalf that they are not prepared to salute their flag.
Mvura yechitubu haibvongodzeki.
Or is it perhaps that there is such a strong wish that it were so that our children rebel against their flag, their nation, that it is being projected so onto them?
During the colonial era, everyday at assembly, we sang:
“God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen”
We had huge posters of Queen Elizabeth, her husband and two sons on our classroom walls.
This did not stop us from loving our country and joining the liberation struggle nevertheless.
Years of this colonial brainwashing could not wean us off the love of our country.
Despite this and all that was anti- Zimbabwe and anti-African, children of Zimbabwe in their thousands left home to fight for the nation that was so insulted by the colonial enemy.
Children were taught that King Lobengula had sold the country through the Rudd Concession, they were taught that Tshaka the Zulu was so cruel, a butcher of his own people.
African history was painted as the story of barbaric tribes butchering each other, we were also taught Great Zimbabwe which they called ‘Zimbabwe Ruins’ was not built by us, but by some non-African foreigners’ but this deluge of hate education did not quench us of our love for ourselves and ours, our land Zimbabwe.
Now if such systematic negative teaching against us did not stop children of Zimbabwe from loving their Zimbabwe unto death, why should children who are born in a free Zimbabwe, beneficiaries of this great sacrifice by their compatriots, heirs of this great legacy, why would they hate their land, why would they have to be forced to salute their flag?
This is not the agenda of Zimbabwe, it is foreign.
We do not know who is cooking these lies, it is not normal, it is not indigenous to us.
Less than two years ago, the people of Zimbabwe voted overwhelmingly for ZANU PF, the party which embodies the two liberation movements which championed the armed struggle which gave birth to Zimbabwe.
Why would they and their children, today, object to saluting the flag which symbolises this nation?
Ah, it defies logic.
While it is wonderful that our children should have an opportunity to salute our flag, what really is tragic is that this is tokenism.
Nothing in the new Curriculum blueprint of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education talks about the liberation struggle at all.
The liberation struggle is not mentioned, not even once.
The ‘blueprint’ does not acknowledge not even once that Zimbabwe was ever colonised.
It never says, not even once, that children should love their Zimbabwe, or do anything for it.
It says nothing about Zimbabweaness.
It is not about Zimbabwe at all, not even an iota.
To ask children to salute the flag when there is nothing at all about that flag, that nation, that country, nothing about what that flag stands for in the curriculum is to make a mockery of something so solemn, something so deeply meaningful.
It is a travesty and it is not fair to the children, in the end they will disensconse.
The children of Zimbabwe are heirs of Zimbabwe.
They should be left in peace to fulfill their mission.
‘Havafaniri kushungurudzwa nokukangaidzwa.’
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.