WE, in the village, like everyone else value education, that is why we will sell our cattle, goats, grow peanuts to send our children to school.

As a nation we are tweaking and fixing our education system to totally dismantle the colonial legacy and significant strides have been made towards reclaiming the education sector.

However, I feel more should be done to link all the school subjects to the concept of hunhu/ubuntu.

Our Africanness, hunhu/ubuntu should be our central pillar supporting our growth and development agenda. 

I will say the greatest challenge facing our education system appears to be the lack of an Afro-focus. 

As a nation we have defined our short, mid and long term vision.

We want to be an economically and technologically advanced rich country whose citizens enjoy the highest possible standards of living. 

We want to be a peaceful country.

We want to be a nation that will all the time be able to defend its independence and sovereignty. 

And to achieve all this we are systematically building our society through exploiting our human and natural resources in a sustainable way. 

To achieve our development goals we need the education sector to fully play its part and pave the way. 

All we are doing, our work must be home-grown directed by the concept of hunhu/ubuntu. 

Even when technology is imported it must be domesticated. 

Why is the education sector important?

What methods have been used to alienate the Africans from themselves?

The Westernised education sector has had the most devastating impact in terms of destroying African identity and disconnecting Africans from their roots, culture and religion.

Education in itself is not bad but when it is directed by foreign values it sets us back.

We may learn about other nations but must do so in the context of our Africanness.

It is crucial that we approach every subject knowing that we are first and foremost African. 

For instance, heads of African families called on to lead in various ceremonies refuse claiming: ‘Ini ndinonamata.’ (I am a Christian/worshipper.) 

Traditional cultural practices have been abandoned by Africans who have been lured into Western churches that denigrate African culture and values, preaching individualism and belief in a white God.

And it is in the education sector that did the harm first.

The younger generations, the pupils, are the adults of tomorrow.

Our education system must emphasize our identity in the greater scheme of things, we must not produce Africans who aspire to be Europeans or Americans. 

I am amazed at the European football frenzy on our local radio stations with people in the villages, in local townships and cities exposed to details of English and European club football and finding many takers. 

Because we do not value who we are or have not been taught to value ourselves the effect is to alienate our population from local African events and to endear them to foreign ones.

Children in Gumbonzvanda, in Musami, Chitungwiza and Makokoba grow up rooting for English clubs and admiring European footballers, foreign movies and even foods. 

When will they identify with things African? 

When we begin to use our education sector to in Zimbabwe and Africa to build and sustain strong African brands in our different spheres of activity. 

That is how we create a generation that is proud to be African.

By marginalising our local languages, we make growing generations believe their languages and cultures are inferior to those of Europeans.

We should be ashamed when our children fail Shona or isiNdebele, when they ‘break’ our indigenous languages.

This condemns Africans to a perpetual inferiority complex.

Independent Africans must stop perpetuating their own marginalisation by failing to defend their own African identity.

Educated technocrats who despise their African background will seek to create mini-Western institutions in their African countries that will only be accessible to the ‘educated’ minority. 

But Africans need to stand up and be themselves and take their rightful place in the family of nations and that confidence will have its foundation laid in the school system. 

They must have an identity that goes beyond the colour of the skin because that colour as we have seen can be changed.