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Richard Mahomva
This year marks the 35th birthday of Zimbabwe. The celebration of the country’s birth cannot go without mention of its global political alienation, but all the same it seems to be defiant and never willing to conform to the dictates of neo-colonialism.Is it because it is living the de-link pedagogy of President Mugabe? Blair keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe! Maybe for that reason I should concur with Professor Nhamo Mhiripiri’s view on “Zimbabwe being Africa’s only colony.”

Some compatriots who religiously embrace the idea of Pan-Africanism as I do may just as well romanticise Zimbabwe’s walk in the creed of Garveyism “Africa for Africans”.

Again with the prevailing peace in the country, opposed to the Black on Black violence — not that I am saying we have never had our moments, can we not stand confidently and equally challenge some “know it all states” in terms of modernity.

Even in our challenges to decolonise the economy, can we not tell the world that we know the feeling of post-colonial period? Though we stand vilified of our race consciousness and methods of self-assertions in gathering our traumas of the past, I think we should look back and celebrate how far we have come.

Our culture of self-consciousness is drawn from our ability to sustain ideological principles of our struggle for independence. The same values have continued to interrogate our pitfalls in consolidating liberation goals even if we lose sight of some pertinent liberation principles in pursuit of political realism.

No matter how much we’re confronted with ugly moments in dealing with national challenges we have somewhere to turn to and find our way back to the reason why some young men and women gave their lives for our Zimbabwe. That turning point I am referring to is what we are celebrating today, the legacy of the Chimurenga-culture.

The Chimurenga-culture is the pillar of today’s patriotic self-acknowledgement and our respect of it is helping us relate with other citizens of the globe and local compatriots who don’t embrace the value systems of what it means “never to be a colony” as advance in the discourse of the Third Chimurenga by President Mugabe.

The Chimurenga-culture is appreciating who we’re today against a background of yesterday’s principles. The same principles that laid the foundation of today’s Zimbabwe and whose life we’re celebrating.

The Chimurenga-culture is the mantra of self-realisation that caused nationalists like Emmerson Mnangagwa to trade their teenage life for national liberation. Likewise young Dumiso Dabengwa was on the frontline of that same struggle.

Some young boys and girls whose names are remembered by history chose the liberation war over the classroom. Through selfless determination they sought the lost humanity of their kind to colonisation. What they had envisaged in all that sacrifice was a better Zimbabwe and to them resistance, resilience and responsiveness to colonial dehumanisation was better than their own lives.

These same young men and women’s efforts helped unchain the “then Zimbabwe” from the shackles of Rhodesia. To them, the dawn of Uhuru was a metaphor of baton passing for the jewel they had secured through selflessness and thus deserved jealous guard.

Other forms of patriotic paralysis manifested when the country got to its “real Chimurenga” which was economic power acquisition through the fast-track land reform. The economic meltdown intensified and the leftist romanticists found the opportunity to spread the gospel of doom as though we had reached a point of no return.

A massive exodus of the country’s young professionals followed as it was the answer for those who chose self-cushioning over safeguarding the baton surrendered to them in the loins of their fathers who fought in the second armed struggle for liberation. Not that I’m vilifying those who are in search of better livelihoods in the Diaspora, because some have invested here at home regardless of the economic challenges.

The collapse in the economy saw various sections of the populace playing the blame game on each other. Then we had the patriots and sellouts, the war veteran and “born free” citizens.

However, my major concern is on the so-called “born-free” Zimbabweans. These are the post-independence babies whom by virtue of age had the privilege to determine Zimbabwe’s fate in 2000. This was their first time to enjoy the democratic right of the baton that had been passed on to them.

This generation and some of my age-mates in our early 20s today are a disappointment to the legacy of the Chimurenga-culture from which we have chosen to divorce ourselves from.

We have preferred to believe modern myth fabricated by a plethora of neo-colonial agents claiming that the Chimurenga-culture is a Zanu-PF personalised epistemology. We even had some anti-establishment scholars funded to misdirect our attention from the positive side of the Chimurenga-culture legacy.

That is wrong and deserves to be corrected because those who began the Chimurenga or Umvukela of 1896 were not Zanu-PF members. They were ordinary Zimbabweans in search of political freedom that Rhodes and his compatriots had deprived them.

This means that the idea of the Chimurenga-culture is the source of our nationhood and not the donor packages and the NGO job contracts we barter our birthright for to be recognised as global citizens.

This invention of self-detachment from what defines our nationhood has seen most young people of my generation losing national belonging to imperial thoughts of global nationlessness. One would wonder where we have lost the plot as young Zimbabweans.

Why have we decided not to take guard of the passed baton of resistance, resilience and responsiveness to neo-colonialism. We are victims of self-worship contrary to the beliefs held by those who passed the baton of our liberation to us. We decide to subscribe to modern propaganda insinuating the discourses of marginalisation which among ourselves were unheard of when the Chimurenga-culture’s social-contact mobilised young guerilla boys and girls to fight the oppressor regardless of clan, tribe and the region they came from.

Today it is a sad thing to see the Chimurenga-culture going down the end-passage of history uncelebrated being viewed with paranoia and associated with a particular ethnic-group or a particular political party. As a result, I hope as we look back we rethink our position in terms of appreciating the legacy of the Chimurenga-culture.

We need to rally around that value system in defence of the passed baton being partisan and tribe-blind. This will help us understand that we have a responsibility and we’re not born to be free. Instead we are duty-bound as the country’s young manpower to project our energies towards the aggressive attainment of the liberation goals encompassed in the Chimurenga-culture. Indeed it is the efforts of yesterday’s youth that made us to be born free, but we’re not free from the duty of passing the baton to the next generation of the Chimurenga-culture.

I’m talking about the future generations of the Chimurenga-culture because I know that the legacy of our struggle will never die. Therefore is it not noble to confront the future with pride and hand over that baton which is a reminder of what it means to be privileged to inherit freedom? Indeed inheriting freedom because this country is a heritage for all its African progeny. As such we’re born to free it from anyone who tries to take it away from us, hence Thomas Mapfumo sang Pasi ndepe nhaka! This land is our heritage!

Richard Mahomva is a published author and editor of research work on African political theory. He is the founder of a Bulawayo-based think-tank Leaders for Africa Network. He is the convener of the annual Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and can be contacted on [email protected]