A decade that lost a generation

generally called “the Zimbabwean crisis” consisted of a combination of political and economic declines. The crisis was rooted in the long-term structural political and economic legacies of colonial rule and combined with the legacies of African nationalist policies has helped shape the current generations.
In multiple ways the “crisis” became manifest through confrontations over land and property rights; contestations over the history and meaning of nationalism and citizenship; the emergence of a critical foreign-sponsored civil society groupings campaigning around trade unions, human rights, constitutional questions and the broader pan-African and anti-imperialist meanings of the struggle for Zimbabwe.
The moral-decadence, social mutilation and economic and political retardation that engulfed the young and the old during this period, may probably, never be remedied if the current and recent issue of Mandimbandimba (rank marshals) is anything to be taken seriously and anything to go by.
To borrow Walter Rodney’s words, the period under review had a posterity “of the development of underdevelopment” in Zimbabwe. During this period, Zimbabwe was driven and controlled by alien and weird economic and social values as a result of the incessant strikes and industrial actions. These values were able to set standards by which people were to define their individual survival.
These values, very alien and weird in nature as they were, were able to underline the preferences people made of their lives and were able to guide choices while indicating what was immediately worthwhile at that time. Thus the period has become known as “era of money burning”.
Though some sections of the Zimbabwean society celebrated the outcome of the declaration on January 26, 2009, by the Southern African Development Community for the formation of the transitional Government under the Global Political Agreement, there appears to be widespread acceptance by realists and the academic community that this period lacked thorough examination of the impact of these political battles to the people of this generation.
The political turmoil witnessed in this period was largely misunderstood as a battle for good governance, rule of law and democracy. However, it was a war of dismantling, destruction, and extinction of the country’s future, heritage and enduring traditions and values. 
Empirically, some analysts such as Peter Drucker argued that “the essence of such political developments was to determine a bleak futurity of the present”. In such a situation and scenario, a nation’s future, which in itself resides in the youth, would be doomed.
The fundamental truth of why Zimbabwe was experiencing such political mayhem remained obliterated in the fog of global political wars and hegemonic battles pitting the thematic whites versus blacks in the struggle for control of Zimbabwe’s destiny and economy. This has led to the political polarisation of the Zimbabwe polite, even today.
The neo-liberal thinking of blacks as perpetual slaves unable to rule themselves and whites as indispensable slave masters was ideally a preoccupation of the global media during this period and worked to cement colonial mentality about and on black people.
The global media, which sought the ouster of the Zanu-PF from power blatantly, demonised the leadership of Zimbabwe to the extent of foretelling “genocide” and a “political and economic holocaust” and the abrupt collapse of all national systems within a few years. This did not see the light of day.
International opinion was then sought by some sections of the Zimbabwe society in partnership with white paternalistic organisations and the dossier for the invitation of sanctions against Zimbabwe was “sexed”.
The sanctions came and destroyed the fibre and fabric of the entire generation. Hence, today rank marshals do not see the commission of a national wrong in attacking, beating and insulting any member of the security forces in uniform. To them the uniform, as a national flag, a revered national insignia and emblem, does not carry any value, any weight and any significance. It does not have any importance.
The period 1999-2009 had profound and far-reaching consequences to the country moral fibre. The doctor’s strike that paralysed operations at major referral hospitals in the country is an example. Bodies waited for hours before taken into mortuaries, as there were no doctors to certify death.
This industrial action was equally an act of extremism, which developed from the working class movement seeking in truth the elimination of the ruling party Zanu-PF and the entire generation.
The ensuing years would suggest that the threat of the decimation of this generation would be in the industrial actions organised by the opposition parties to terrorise both Government and the generation of this time. Most people will remember the “pushes” that culminated into the so-called “final push”.
Years from 1999-2009 were years that the relationship between Britain and Zimbabwe soared because of the reforms in land.
Many Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom received marked ill-treatment and deportations; others were denied entry into that country on any flight from Harare. The deportations were, at that time, viewed by the Human Rights Organisation chairperson, Mr Nicholas Ndebele, as politically motivated.
There were further reports of poor treatment, including racist and political comments and it became obvious that the immigration officers at London’s Gatwick Airport, the main port of entry for people from Africa into Britain, were practising a terrorism of race, self-esteem and nationality.
The decade is also remembered for the leniency extended to American gunmen Gary George Blanchard, Joseph Wendell Pettijohn and Lamonte Dickson by Justice Adam and how this sentence constituted a betrayal of Zimbabwe’s security and sovereign interests.
This was the beginning of the exercise of ethnocentric judicial judgements in Zimbabwe and Anthony Gubbay was to practise this over the land litigations brought to court by the white commercial farmers in the ensuing years.
This is again a decade when teachers famously went on strike for an extended period of time, leaving children to play “fish-fish” and “pada” in their classrooms, leaving examination classes without invigilators, and examination results failing to come out because markers failed to turn up for marking.
Unashamedly, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe then Christopher Dell, referred to the period as having backtracked Zimbabwe to half a century gone, during a speech he                  delivered to students at Africa University in 2005.
Unbeknown to the students was that Dell’s speech was an echo of neo-colonialism, which expressed the desire for Zimbabwe to be backtracked to 1953, a period when colonialism was at its height and the level of education for indigenous Zimbabweans was merely for communication purposes.
Equally the same, the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe were to create an illiterate generation, a generation of mahwindi, moneychangers and mandimbandimba, who would only think, not of the future, but that immediate moment of their lives. A nation that way would lose its reliance on such a generation.
That loss would eventually grant a nation as useless in the event that that generation attain leadership of the country. The revolutionary spirit of resistance to colonialism would have been weaned away and in its place a sincere submission of rights would reside.
Ben Turok in an article entitled “The Left in Africa Today” contends that the African continent has been experiencing more instability and dislocation than at any other time since the end of colonial rule. Many governments have been undergoing severe political crises with revolutionary governments becoming increasingly discredited.
The goodwill accorded to them in the early years when the African masses took pride in their apparent independence is gone.
There emerged, during this period, a resurgent of new traditional terrorism, a terrorism which was and still is different from the widely known terrorism, a terrorism which a growing academic community accepted and still accepts as neo-colonialism and has replaced the colonial systems of yesteryears. This type of terrorism became and is known as sanctions.
This was and is still a new brand of terrorism that sought and continues to seek to disenfranchise hope, dignity, self-esteem and every sense of survival in the people of this generation. It was and still is a terrorism that deliberately targeted and continues to target and disregard the safety of this generation.
It was and still is terrorism against the people’s birthrights, authority and ownership, a terrorism of national pride, pride of place and livelihood. It is a terrorism that has been and has become a means to the end, whose venom has created a black cloud over the people of this generation.
A terrorism that have transgressed into a global hate against Zimbabwe and has been widely viewed as constituting a betrayal of all civilised acceptable notions of justice.
The results of such terrorism have certainly manifested themselves in the recent developments in Harare where a group of rank marshals ganged up to beat and humiliate two members of the uniformed forces at the Charge Office commuter rank.
The retaliation by the security forces in the “clean-up” campaign that followed saw some sections of the media, particularly the private and independent, resorting to condemnation of the security forces actions, rendering these media houses to qualify as “part of the generation lost” by this decade.
The Zimbabwe Defence Forces uniform, together with that of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and Zimbabwe Prison Service forms an integral part of the national emblem of a country. So for someone, more so an ordinary person, to have the audacity to challenge, beat and insult a member of the security forces in uniform for that matter is both a political and social abomination.
Far more profound is the amount of damage meted to this generation by this period. Will the damage be ever repaired? Or it’s a festering sore that will haunt this country for many years to come?