WE, in the village, totally agree that we should build on the gains made in the last five years; that we are standing on terra firma is self-evident and cannot be disputed.
“Together, we should be able to agree on a common programme of economic action designed to take our nation forward, building on the gains recorded in the past five years. A lot was achieved, creating a firm pedestal for sustained economic growth. I will emphasise production and productivity in industry and across sectors, including vigorous pursuit of clear and efficient value chains which make our economy a competitive manufacturer and exporter,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa said in his weekly column in The Sunday Mail.
These are profound words that should take root.
We are rebuilding Zimbabwe, that must be clearly understood.
Every African, every black person, is living in glass houses that the whiteman constructed for us.
And these houses are fragile.
In these houses, we are all unsafe and must stop throwing stones at one man who has had the courage not just to point it out but do something about it.
President Mnangagwa is moving us out of the unsafe glass houses.
More than dealing with hardware, the Second Republic is also working on our software, our minds, our way of thinking.
We may have got our political independence, but are we spiritually independent or African.
We may have reclaimed our land and its resources back from the whiteman, but are we governing, running them, defending them and protecting them spiritually and culturally as Africans, as Zimbabweans?
There are some among us who want us to continue to govern as Europeans do in Europe and America and as Rhodesians did in Zimbabwe.
To belong to a village, to be a villager is not measured by one’s name or ‘book’ but the content of one’s spirituality, culture and values rooted in the soils of his/her own land.
To succeed, to build on the successes recorded thus far, we must stop yearning to be white spiritually and culturally.
It has been argued that we continue to be in problems and going backwards because the struggle for spiritual and cultural independence has never been taken seriously anywhere in Africa after independence.
African culture and spirituality, by and large, have been left as matters of individual choice and conscience.
But not in Zimbabwe.
The fact that we are reminded that this is Munhumutapa’s land means we are serious about who we are as a people, where we have come from and where we are going.
The African idea of a saviour cannot continue to be the epitome of the whiteman.
We should be delighted that our education system has been revamped to teach the Zimbabwean child to be the master of his/her own environment and not emulate the whiteman.
Steadily, as a nation, we are doing away with the great confusion on the difference between education and schooling.
Education leads to self-knowledge and boosts self-esteem and pride in a people and that is where Zimbabwe is headed.
Mere imparting of information and skills is not really an education but understanding what one can do for his/her community is.
Let us pay heed to Marcus Garvey’s advice if we are to save ourselves from the whiteman and his onslaught on our identity and pride as Africans in his Message to the People:
“African parents must teach their children African history and African pride and self-respect in their homes to counteract the elementary and high school education they get that holds up the superiority of the white race. In no way should African parents allow their children to play with white dolls because they will grow up to like white children…The best tribute a race can pay to nature and God is to preserve its species; when it does otherwise, it is in rebellion. Don’t be in rebellion against God, nature or your parents.
Never be satisfied to always live under the government of other people because you will always be at their mercy. Visualize for yourself and your children and generations unborn, your own king, emperor, and president, who look like you. God never could have intended to make you look as you look and make your king, president, of a different race than you are.
All races or nations will use you as slaves and underdogs…because all peoples want all things for themselves. Your only protection is to have your own government. Explain this sufficiently so as to discourage ignorant Africans from thinking otherwise. You should teach Africans to have pride in their own nationality and governments.
Teach Africans to look for honour in their own race and from their own nation and to serve their own race and nation to get such honours. Don’t bow down to other races for recognition. The sovereignty of a people is in their nation. It is the result of a people forming a society of their own to govern themselves and to achieve their ends.
Make your nation the highest expression of human idealism and live up to it. Think of the race in the highest terms of human living and that there is no one better than you. All beauty is in you and not outside of you. Confine your affection to your race and God will bless you and men will honour you.”
