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Stephen Mpofu

No one can say off the cuff precisely how many of them are still around but there are probably not very, very many connoisseurs of old school nationalist politics still on their strong knees and breathing patriotic fire politics to incinerate road blocks obstructing the movement of our highly literate nation to greater heights of political, economic and social advancement.

Today, 18 April 2020 and 40 years on, Zimbabweans, in spite of the current Covid-19 pandemic are wont to go down memory lane to the same date in 1980 and say “siyabonga/tinotenda” to poor folk there in the countryside who bore the liberation struggle on their shoulders to the very end and, more importantly, we say hooray! hooray! to the living gallant sons and daughters of the soil and to their colleagues who fell in the frontline and are buried in marked and unmarked graves elsewhere on African soil.

We all say well done, comrades, to them and to those freedom fighters still alive as we pay a huge debt of gratitude for their justified impunity in rendering null and void the black power political lockdown by foreigners without knees foreigners without fleeing material and power hunger beyond many waters to exploit those values here in our county and elsewhere in Africa by driving black people into their harness and slapping “yes, nkosi” blinkers on them before our AK-totting boys and girls gave the invaders short shrifts to herald Uhuru to the motherland in 1980.

But not wanting to be undone by their former, virtual slaves and missing those memorable rides on the backs of our people, the imperialists returned with a vengeance, imposing an economic lockdown to try to remove the Zanu-Pf government from power for introducing the land reform programme in 2000 to entrench our independence and self-determination.

But tragically ironic, the beleaguered imperialists were hastily and even publicly supported in their heinous plot by their sell-outs — some of them fugitives from the liberation war front or toddlers still smelling of breast milk at independence — in the stooges’ desperation to be hoisted, like flags to power and flap, flap their kowtows to their imperialist masters while pretending to represent the interests of the people of this country.

What a tragedy of tragedies this is!

The thesis of this discourse is for Zimbabweans to be well informed at all times about the forces positive and negative at play in the world, in the past and in post-modernity in order for all of us to navigate the future with our eyes wide open.

For instance, how many of the freedom fighters alive today would passionately love to resume at the blow of the whistle — as for the resumption of a sporting game after a break — the journey they once travelled, facing the gauntlet of mosquito and snake bites, not to mention ambushes by enemy Rhodesian soldiers in the bush?

The answer is that virtually no freedom fighter will want to retrace the hazardous journey which was undertaken for the love of independence that we enjoy now.

Which, therefore suggests that Zimbabweans — and for that matter Africans elsewhere — must be well informed about the difficult journey their countries travelled to this day so that everyone, old and young, but literate Zimbabwean will support to the hilt any democratic government of the day and along with that our hard-won independence and freedom.

But such pervasive knowledge presupposes saturation of the people with information in books, on film and in lyrics.

For instance, how much information about the war of liberation in this country has been immortalised in books, for the people of all ages to know more about the journey that the motherland travelled to be where it is today?

What on earth do the professors of history or fundis in international political dynamics think they are doing if they continue to sit on their backsides instead of reminding or informing Zimbabweans of all age groups about the turbulent journey our country took to be where we are today? The answer is that there is not much to write home about yet watch and listen to these learned people and interlocutions in pubs with fellow imbibers gloating about their being “scholars” of European or American history or of both these disciplines, as if our own black people have no history with which to feel invisible scrids in the air in pubs or similar social environments.

Shame, shame to them. But unfortunately the shame also boomerangs on all innocent Zimbabweans.

The crux of the matter in point here is that, instead of sitting on their warm backsides, our professors of history and international political dynamics should educate Zimbabweans of all age groups about the turbulent journey our country took to be where we are today.

Or are they fellow imperialist travellers but villains, to whom their masters now also struggling under the coronavirus pandemic,will not throw the lackeys a lifeline but instead leave them to their own fate, which is the problem that they and all of us face today?

Cde Robert Mugabe, the late president of this country and of the ruling Zanu-PF party once spoke of a plan by his government to set up a panel of ministers and historians who would then write the history of the liberation struggle to guide our people into a bold new future .

It is, indeed, a sad commentary for a nation known for its high literacy rating on the African continent to not have an entire history of the liberation struggle — and not a topic here and there in school textbooks as is the case today — to show the world the great literate stuff of which we are made, above all other things.

Meanwhile, as we head still alive into the remaining days of the Covid-19 lockdown in Zimbabwe, each one of us must declare with unmitigated vehemence their protection by our Creator as is immortalised Psalm 91: 2 “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him I will trust”, and we shall get there unscathed.

But, of course, the bottom line of the anniversary of a nation’s independence such as our own, won through the barrel of the gun after a protracted struggle, is reconciliation, unity, unity and unity to serve as a fillip for peace, stability and unimpeded national development.