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Perhaps nowhere is such a trip more emphasised than in Sankofa, a West African concept which goes something like this: “It is not taboo to return to the past to fetch what we forgot.”
Yet today, in the hustle and bustle of post-modernity to try to catch up with those perceived as models of success socially, economically and politically, a lot of things that might appear mundane or inconsequential, are glossed over with disastrous consequences in the end.
This is especially dangerous since contemporary imperialists move at such a fast and blinding pace to put mounting pressure on small nations, African countries included, in order to overwhelm them so as to disarray them politically and exploit their rich natural resources once their political institutions and cultures are weakened.
In this regard, therefore, Africa Day must cease to be a day for long rhetorical speeches that are short on practicality and long, empty, intellectual verbosity. An important day like that choked with embassy upon embassy of colourful words that remain ineffectual in transforming the lives of the continent’s peoples ends up as an indictment on contemporary African leaders for standing on intellectual quicksand which cannot withstand the powerful force of the winds of imperialism.
The concept (free) above is deliberately italicised to try to emphasise a reality that some might disregard that African countries at least many of them, are technically free as social and economic circumstances compel them to continually trot in the shadow of the First World after crumbs that fall from the master’s table.
It therefore becomes not only logical but a matter of life and death for African nations, including Zimbabwe, to anchor themselves on their historical legacy of the freedom struggle.
This is probably better understood if nations are regarded as narratives so that one nation revisiting its past consequently updates, or replicates itself.
Closer to home, historical agents of the struggle for freedom no doubt include Nehanda, Kaguvi, Lobengula and all those heroic sons and daughters of the soil who laid down their precious young lives fighting the racist Rhodesian enemy in the bush so that we might all be free at last.
Revisiting those heroes and heroines of the struggle is taking ourselves, like cars, to a garage for refuelling in order to continue on the road of independence and freedom which must be without end.
Thus, by entering memory lane to fetch those things that we left behind and are essential, we build firmer new bridges into the future. It has to be remembered though, that the imperialists from whom we, as Africans, extricated ourselves when we became independent know no surrender.
In fact, imperialism is a python lying motionless on the ground, its bright colours entice a potential quarry to draw near for closer examination, and without realising it the victim finds itself entangled in the powerful reptile’s crushing conscriptions.
Similarly, there are Zimbabweans, and, indeed, other people elsewhere, who admire and are attracted by imperialism’s colours — the money and sweet but lethal tongue — that senselessly move into imperialism’s powerful coils and regret when it is too late.
Africa Day should be viewed as a wake-up call for the people of this country and others elsewhere to tread into the future with one eye looking ahead and the other looking back in order to elude any enemy of our revolution who might be stalking us all the while recruiting quislings among us into its ranks in a bid to reverse the gains of freedom and independence.
Which is why it is strategically important to celebrate living heroes of the political struggle and those of the economic freedom — the Nelson Mandelas, Kenneth Kaundas, the Robert Mugabes, Sam Nujomas, the Thabo Mbekis and the Julius Malemas, respectively, with Africa’s all-weather, socialist friends from the east in tow.
The visibility of these comrades especially in the current economic revolutionary epoch should remain a constant warning to Zimbabwe’s and to other economic soldiers elsewhere not to sheathe their fighting spirit because they are not yet completely out of the woods.
Online Reporter