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Coming after the armed revolution that brought independence, and hot on the heels of the agrarian revolution and of the indigenisation and empowerment revolution now under way to democratise Zimbabwe’s economy, the Nust-driven revolution should decolonise Zimbabwean minds still hurting under a backlash of alien cultural values superimposed by our colonial rulers with the printed word from the so-called centre of knowledge and wisdom in the West.
Long after independence, 32 years ago next month, books published by western multinational companies with branches in this country are still regarded by many

Zimbabweans as the literature of first choice even in Zimbabwean schools.
This means that since books that tell the Zimbabwean story in the Zimbabwean idiom are fewer, even frowned upon by Zimbabweans suffering from an inferiority complex, children, particularly in pre-schools, are socialised on fairy tales in books written by foreigners and with no relevance whatsoever to Zimbabwean culture.

But more Zimbabweans eventually ruling the roost in the publishing industry will own the content of what they publish through their editorial policies so that Zimbabweans see their name in the books published, and nothing can revolutionise the publishing industry more than this.
Dr Nda Dlodlo, who chairs the Department of Publishing Studies at Nust, perhaps put it more poignantly when he said the students being trained in publishing will put that industry back to its golden era in the 1990s when secondary industries sprung up due to a buoyant publishing environment.

But Dr Dlodlo, whose works in publishing as an executive with Longman Zimbabwe and also with that conglomerate in South Africa spanned many decades, put a proviso to glory days in publishing returning to this country, saying this would be contingent upon revived economic conditions and a continued tenure at the top most office in the land by a good leader who takes care of other people first not vice-versa, was futuristic and ensured political stability in the country.

The first lot of 11 out of 12 students taught by Dr Dlodlo and two assistants graduated last year with Bachelor of Science Honours Degrees in Publishing, with the remaining student expected to complete his studies this year.
Efforts are now being made to send the graduates for higher degrees abroad so they can come back to teach at the university. Dr Dlodlo said the degree programme had been redesigned for students to be taught how to write book reviews, produce magazines and write articles for publication, in addition to publishing.

This will obviously produce a cadre of literate men and women with hands-on experience. 
Dr Dlodlo also founded an academic press at Nust with a South African company, Media 24, as a partner. The Nust press has now bought out the South African company and is expected to play a vital role producing Mathematical books and other reading materials badly needed in schools in this country.

Dr Dlodlo was mandated by his United Kingdom parent company to open Longman branches in Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania when he was still at the helm at Longman Zimbabwe in Harare.

As such, the Zimbabwean students in publishing who go through his hands should give publishing a brave new future with books written by Zimbabweans in Zimbabwean languages about the joys and tribulations of Zimbabweans and about the journey the country has travelled since its colonisation by Britain in 1890 to date. This will give our people and the country a richer, new-historical perspective based on true rather than imagined or fabricated accounts.

What this also suggests is that Zimbabweans should migrate from the vestiges of a colonial mentality that makes some people believe that books written in English language are superior to those written in their mother language even though the former may have decadent cultural values.

It is precisely due to that colonial mentality that we have negligible numbers of classics written in siNdebele or Shona, Tonga, or Venda or in other minority languages.

As a result our children grow up with a shocking grasp of their mother language  which carries their cultural values and           instead feel proud and educated to be heard speaking in English, even broken English for that matter.
This situation is made worse by parents who smile in admiration when their young children speak to them in English, instead of their mother language. And it is not a shame that even Zimbabwean adults, a majority of them hardly complete a sentence in a conversation with interlocutors without throwing in an English word or two to the rescue after running out of appropriate words in their mother language to motivate their discussions.

Therefore, a publishing industry that perpetuates the dominance of foreign languages in books written for Zimbabweans should be regarded as anathema.
When editorial policy in publishing emanates from within the country, the content of books published must mirror the Zimbabwean social, economic and political perspectives, be they ugly or beautiful. On the contrary, Zimbabwean authors or Zimbabweans responsible for marketing books published by local-based foreign companies rarely if at all, have a say on the content of those books because the foreign publisher boasts the prerogative to push things down the throats of “poor natives” whether they like it.

As a result of that holier-than-thou attitude, Mr Felix Moyo, director of communications at Nust, once told a South African interlocutor in a conversation at a meeting in that country that he still suffered from a “stomach ache” caused by alien values pushed down his throat by colonialists.
No doubt many Zimbabweans today are also afflicted with stomach cramps resulting from foreign cultural values pushed down our throats by self-anointed cultural or political godfathers.

Communicologist Moyo walked out on a foreign publishing company in Harare after serving it for 15 years marketing books because he was denied any input into the books he was employed to market.
Determined to demonstrate the literacy  stuff of which he was made, he started his own Usiba Publishing House in Bulawayo and has confounded both his former employer and other book publishers who laughed at his decision to abandon a company car and other lucrative perks to walk into an opaque future.

His is a success story that has not only seen his publishing house supplying thousands of books badly needed in schools, but also make him a role model for new publishers being trained at Nust.
He told this writer earlier this week that the publishing programme at Nust would not only widen the publishing space covered by indigenous publishing houses, that are to be counted on one hand, but that the new black publishers would explode the myth that foreign publishers are given from heaven and who alone should reign supreme in a foreign country regardless of whether they adulterate your culture or subjugate your mind.

Time is now propitious for liberating Zimbabwean minds from any and all vestiges of cultural imperialism through the printed word.
Mr Moyo also recently said that some students failed to secure places at Nust because they obtained no passes in siNdebele, a requirement for courses they wanted to take at the university. He called on teachers at schools to intensify the teaching of the language as an empowerment tool for students wishing to proceed with their studies at the university. The same can also be said of other students’ command of and performance in Shona in their examinations.

But how can these students do better in their various mother languages which sadly appear to be in intensive care? For instance, you listen to both adult and young people speaking in “Ndeenglish” (siNdebele mixed with English words) or in Shona and English words strung together into “Shoenglish”.

One needs only listen to some advertisements aired on television or radio to confirm that some indigenous Zimbabwean languages may be headed towards extinction because of their serious corruption by foreign words.
The survival of our indigenous languages in their purity would appear to lie in a linguistic renaissance by developing the local languages through a proliferation of books written by experts in both the main and minority languages spoken in Zimbabwe.

In addition, our leaders should stop addressing public meetings in English with an interpreter, instead of entering a state of inter-subjectivity with their fellow black audiences by talking to them directly in their own language.

And why not decolonise parliamentary debates by compelling all Honourable Members in that august House to conduct debates in local languages instead of in English as though they were at Westminster?
The same might be said of the business in our courts so that Zimbabweans become truly their own by giving preference for the languages of their own soul as they are not cohabited by a duality of English and Zimbabwean souls.  Or is the absence of a lingua franca in Zimbabwe the handicap?

Back to the four-year Nust degree programme in point with one year of internship, work produced by the students there will be showcased at the Nust stand during the Trade Fair in Bulawayo next month, according to Dr Dlodlo.

The book covers and magazines designed by the students are eloquent statements and those critiquing them will decide whether Nust produced scientific-cum-artistic functionaries made of gold or silver or bronze.
To be sure, Zimbabwe needs professionals of sterner stuff to help the country transcend her status as a less developed state.