Chronicle Editor
Mbuso Ndhlovu
IT is expected that people’s outlook on life greatly reflects past experiences. Different generations as a matter of fact inevitably have varying world views and that applies to politics too. The liberation struggle was mostly prosecuted by boys and girls who abandoned studies at secondary schools and the University of Rhodesia. That meant that most were mere teenagers with a few who were in their early twenties. The sacrifices were extremely huge.
Imagine the likes of Retired Major Perseverance Mazinyane, Minister Monica Mutsvangwa, Queen Maligwa and Joice Mujuru who were about 15-years-old enduring all the rigours of guerrilla warfare. That entails going for long periods without adequate food, shelter and clothing. As for medication, protection from wildlife and the weather elements everything rested on the Creator and the ancestors.
As if that was not bad enough, they had to be on the lookout for land mines, poisoned water sources, poisoned clothes while protecting civilians from the enemy and engaging their adversaries. Worse still, Judas Iscariots among the villagers were ready to betray these revolutionaries who were surviving on wild fruit, for ‘trinkets’ like biscuits, tinned beef and beans from the Rhodesian army.
Sadly it is now fashionable to hear today’s youths trivialising the role played by their parents in liberating this country. The boys and girls, whose view of war is based on Star Wars and other Sci-Fi are always glued to smartphones and video games and ignorantly convinced war is a game. They see themselves skidding in huge all-terrain vehicles fitted with high calibre weapons.
Machine guns spitting a thousand bullets per minute, anti-air missiles menacingly pointed to the sky while huge ugly anti-tank missiles perforate anything in their way is how they imagine war. Some adventure. Some game in which they shout profanities cursing the enemy as guns are let loose.
The youth watch American movies and forget they are detached from reality. It appears real fun hence they feel they missed out on the liberation war thus we often hear slobbering ntshengu sloshed boys saying they wish their parents could return the country to colonial rule so that they can liberate it themselves. They perceive themselves to be more capable of solving what they actually cannot comprehend since they didn’t experience racial segregation and white minority rule. Some actually wish they could have been second class citizens in their own country without dignity, no vote, restricted jobs, small housing, poor schools, limited opportunities no matter how intelligent, low salaries, barred from “white jobs”, areas, shops, clinics, pubs, buses, clear beer, and generally regarded as inferior to dogs such that police asked where you got a wrist watch or white shirt from.
Blacks bought through shop windows and were barred from pavements. They needed a pass to live in town in male only or female only hostels. Only very few blacks were allowed to go beyond Grade 7 and even less Form 2 under the bottleneck education system meaning fewer blacks could proceed beyond next level till University.
It is shocking that while black Americans like Diallo Sumbry of the Adinka group have migrated to Ghana and are assisting Africans born in the diaspora to settle in Africa, the African youth are disparaging their own continent wishing they too could experience colonialism and racism.
Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Paul Mavima must have been referring to such youths when he urged them to emulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga who sacrificed their comfort when they joined the liberation struggle for socio-economic transformation and emancipation.
Of late, there is a breed that calls itself ”student activists”. They have monopolised social media particularly, Twitter. In their ignorance they seem to think student activism is a new phenomenon. Blissfully unaware that the likes of Chris Mutsvangwa were actually expelled from the University of Rhodesia for standing up to the brutal racist colonial administrators. There were no kid gloves then. They were not related to black students and brooked no criticism no matter how insignificant. They were neither judicious nor soft as wool as they regarded black students with disdain. Students were brutalised for “imagining that they could be equal to whites”.
While the revolutionary students read and were inspired by Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Mao Zedong, Houphouet Boigny, Walter Rodney and Agostino Neto today’s students are “cool” with calling each other “dawg” and “thot”, really? How do they expect to be respected when they cannot respect themselves?
Some of them seem to have lost themselves and if the demon of negativity infests you, you hardly appreciate anything in life. While opportunities are abound, they cannot see them as they expect some people from Europe to employ them instead of creating employment for themselves and other youths. When old people come in to rescue the situation, they are labelled grannies who are denying youth space yet the youth want to squander what the revolutionaries bequeathed them. Our children want to behave like eyeballs which never grow in size from birth till death. They want the liberators to fulfill everything that they set out to do when as teenagers they left school for Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Libya, and Botswana and beyond.
The current students body forgets that before them, their parents during the war actually got scholarships (as students) to study anywhere in the world particularly in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, China, New Zealand, Egypt, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Cuba, West Indies, Yugoslavia (Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia,Herzegovina,etc) Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia, Estonia,Belarus etc). Therefore it is not like they were not educated, in fact they were better exposed to various educational aspects than today’s youth who gallivant with a huge ego likening all voices of reason to “dogs that need to be lashed until they sober up from whisky.”
Which African student can forget the experiences at the iconic Patrice Lumumba University in Russia? Lumumba was the first president of the Democratic Republic of Congo allegedly assassinated by the USA and Belgium. Doctors qualifications displayed on surgeries will enlighten today’s youth where they were trained especially India and Ukraine (under Soviet Union).
Our youth must not be desperate for a casus belli.
The revolutionary liberation war youth must take it upon themselves, like Minister Mavima has done, to teach the new generation born free youths the values of the liberation struggle as well as the achievements so far like land reform, mining beneficiation, educational and industrial advancements, transport, media, health, retail, construction, service, sport, entertainment, fashion, modelling opportunities, manufacturing and politics of course.
In Australia they say we don’t have to drop a bucket every time we disagree and neither do we have to spit the dummy.
Online Reporter