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Stephen Mpofu

Every fourth month of the year on Zimbabwe’s calendar is Uhuru month and tomorrow, April 18, Independence Day, and with Zimbabwe at 41, our people are wont to make this declaration, Covid-19 virus restrictions on mass celebrations or no: “ whether the weather be good, whether the weather be bad we shall weather the weather.”

In simpler terms they will be reaffirming the unflinching intrepidity with which they overcame racist trials and tribulations at the behest of those without knees who usurped our motherland, turning its black inhabitants into virtual slaves.

Which strongly suggests that the joy given off by the freedom, independence and self-determination on Independence Day will swell the hearts of many Zimbabweans and catalyse their resolve to protect the freedom for which some gallant sons and daughters sacrificed with their lives and remain interred in unmarked graves in bushes at home and abroad.

Unfortunately, however, born frees, even those delivered in the early years of independence day, in 1980 and 81, not to mention in the latter years, know by mere hearsay about the racist, colonial vicissitudes of life that others before them went through and so they just follow, like sheep, the joy that those blacks who survived colonialism celebrate on April 18 each year.

Now, the crux of the matter in point in this discourse can be succinctly stated this way.How do you ( yes, you) expect people to embrace and defend the good difference of the freedom they now enjoy from something that they did not personally experience in their lives?

In this regard how are millions of Zimbabweans born after Independence in 1980 and with some of them becoming future leaders in Government and in commerce and industry expected to jealously guard the freedom and Independence we enjoy today so that so that it continues ad infinitum with future generations also continuing to prosper our beloved country? Unbiased liberation historical accounts made compulsory in our schools’ syllabi will fill the gap created by a lack of personal experience of the trials and tribulations that older generations of Zimbabweans experienced under colonialism by making born frees re-live the same experiences so that the future citizens of this country will be emboldened to defend the motherland against any imperialist machinations whether some among them become imperialist stooges in a determined bid to be hoisted into power themselves by their foreign masters.

But tragedy of tragedies, no-holds-barred historical accounts of the freedom struggle that our people waged against imperialist, colonial forces are anywhere in sight for young generation Zimbabweans to read in order to be well versed about the past so as to steadfastly defend the present and the future for generations to inherit and pass on to those to come after them.

Not only that. Visitors to this country buying liberation history books in libraries to take back home to their foreign countries could do a marvelous job of promoting the heroic character of Zimbabweans for other people in the global village to respect and support us economically, politically et cetera.

Some teachers in the countryside spoken to by this writer by telephone this week did mention that students encountered bits of liberation historical accounts in their textbooks but that these were inadequate to give those born after April 18, 1980 a full picture of life-and-death encounters our people had with white colonial rulers some of whose kith settled by force on vast tracks of fertile land, pushing black farmers into the peripheries where some continued to eke out meagre existence until the land reform program came into effect with some of the land previously stolen from our people by white settlers being given back to them and with the imperialist West imposing sanctions which continue to this day, to try to remove the Zanu-PF Government from power so that the misery of our people in the then so-called periphery might continue.

One of the rural teachers interviewed – with all of them preferring anonymity – said in concurrence with Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo, the Zanu-PF national spokesman, recently that some liberation history accounts by some writers were biased.

A need therefore exists for flesh-and-blood historians to be roped in by the Government, or by a conscience derived from an unmitigated love of the motherland, to produce true histories of the liberation struggle that brought us independence and freedom and of the land reform programme, respectively, for those to come in the future and who, unlike present generation Zimbabweans who are experiencing the rewards of land reform will make that process go a long way in reinstating our country as the regional, and even continental bread basket.

Tempus fugit and any lackadaisical responses to calls by some among the public for true liberation and land reform histories to be immortalized in black and white as biographies of our beloved country, might give political fourth columnists the leeway to de-campaign our Government with their foreign masters hurling spanners into the works of Government and our land with detrimental effects to our nation.

That this year’s Independence celebrations are on a Sunday should be regarded by both Christians and non-Christians as a given from God so that in our festivities restricted though they maybe to curb the spread of Covid -19 each and every Zimbabwean ought to be impelled by their conscience to break on their knees wherever they might be and pray to God for helping us to be where we are today and for more divine wisdom to be prospered in the name of Jesus Christ in whatever we undertake for our nation and for our families.