VICE-PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa’s exhortation to the nation recently that all should respect that Zimbabwe is a unitary state underlined a principle which is critical for Zimbabwe’s survival.
Many states in Africa have exploded into genocidal chaos when this principle failed to hold.
When people do not know what it is that makes them a people, nothing works.
What makes a people is ‘oneness’.
When a whole lot of splinters are held behind one border they are not a people, they still remain splinters, therefore it is necessary for the people of Zimbabwe to know and remember that what makes them a people is oneness.
For this most important reason, it is necessary for our school curriculum to take the principle of oneness very seriously.
It is one of the cardinals in our constitution and it is indispensable to us as a nation.
It is one thing to teach adults that Zimbabwe is a unitary state, but it is to secure the nation to teach this to our children from crèche to university, because this way, it remains part of their psyche and the nation can rest in peace.
It is therefore alarming that in the ‘new curriculum blueprint’ recently produced by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, this cardinal principle is totally lacking, totally absent.
Ironically, the last page of the appendices to the curriculum blueprint document lists the 10 official languages of Zimbabwe as given in the constitution, the same ones VP Mnangagwa was reminding the nation of.
Inside the document, however, instead of prescribing that children should learn Zimbabwe’s languages and cultures across the land, the ‘blueprint’ prescribes foreign languages: French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Swahili, supposedly to facilitate trade, tourism, communication and conferencing.
This upside-down prioritisation does not recognise what comes first in Zimbabwe’s survival, what is important for peace, unity and stability in the land.
It is the right of Zimbabwe’s children to understand themselves, but if they only understand themselves as individual entities, then they do not truly understand themselves, but if they understand themselves as part of a bigger whole called Zimbabwe, then they truly understand themselves because in this bigger whole there is more than Shona and Ndebele, there is Kalanga, Shangaan, Xhosa, Tonga, Chewa, Nambiya and other ethnicities.
It is this multiplicity of ethnicities that make up the whole called Zimbabwe.
It is each of these ethnicities that make up Zimbabwe, no more, no less than any other in the land.
Their cultures, their moral, ethical and aesthetic attitudes values and feelings, their music, their dance, their dress, art, their food, their folklore, all this is part of Zimbabwe’s wealth, part of her heritage.
Inter-cultural learning that is enriched by the multiplicity of all of Zimbabwe’s ethnicities, is the right of each child of Zimbabwe and it is critical for promoting peace, unity and stability in the land, a task which each Zimbabwean is assigned by the constitution of the land.
Thus to promote the teaching of so many different foreign languages to Zimbabwe’s children before teaching them Zimbabwe’s languages and cultures is to reveal priorities that are upside-down.
A nation has to exist and hold together before it can trade and communicate with foreigners.
Zimbabweans have to know, understand and appreciate themselves inorder to remain a cohesive whole and schools have a fundamental role to play in this regard.
To forge unity in our diversity is not optional, it is indispensable.
It is hard to imagine that in the so-called ‘Curriculum Review’, the purported nationwide consultation carried out by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, no Zimbabweans, from the Zambezi to the Limpopo, suggested that the new curriculum should include the teaching of Zimbabwe’s languages and cultures across the nation.
It cannot be.
The likelihood is very much that it was suggested and discarded like all the other contributions which were submitted, but do not feature at all in the ‘blueprint’.
The ‘blueprint’ is very systematic and consistent in its non-Zimbabweaness.
As we revealed in earlier articles, the ‘blueprint’ does teach children that they are Zimbabweans, or what it means to be Zimbabwean.
The proposed curriculum is not referenced on Zimbabwe.
This is disturbing because people who do not know who they are, what they are, are as easy to slice as a knife through a cake.
You can cut them into as many pieces of as many shapes as you want because they cannot defend something which to them does not exist.
They do not feel violated when their oneness is attacked because it has never been part of their psyche, it has never existed.
Who will teach the children that Zimbabwe is a unitary state when the school curriculum does not even teach the children that they are Zimbabweans?
Divide and rule served Rhodesia’s purposes of splintering us in order to forestall our united onslaught against their criminal occupation of our country.
To reverse this and build a new consciousness among our people, we have to resolutely march in the opposite direction, towards the direction that says: “What makes us a people is our oneness,” and we have to deliberately and consistently teach this to Zimbabwe’s children from crèche to university.
What will teach the children that it is their duty and responsibility to protect Zimbabwe’s territorial integrity when the school curriculum does not even mention the liberation struggle?
How can the children conceive of a Zimbabwe without the liberation struggle?
Could there have been a Zimbabwe without the liberation struggle?
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.