Chronicle Editor
Obi Egbuna Jr Simunye—
On December 10, 1965, recognised globally as Human Rights Day, Dr Martin Luther King Jr delivered perhaps one of his bravest and most militant speeches entitled “Let My People Go”.In it, he eloquently stated “Africa does have spectacular savages and brutes today, but they are not black.
“They are the sophisticated white rulers of South Africa, who profess to be cultured religious and civilised but whose conduct and philosophy stamp them unmistakably as modern day barbarians”.
What Dr King beautifully pointed out is the violent atrocities our former enslavers and colonisers have committed past and present, can never be overshadowed by shameless masquerades as women and men who are guided by a moral compass rooted in compassion and truth. Due to the historical cultural and generational disconnect, our current generation both at home in Mother Africa, as well as those of us based throughout the African Diaspora, remain vulnerable and gullible to the narratives propagated by US-EU Imperialism, who want to portray themselves as genuinely invested in the upliftment and empowerment of the African child.
A recent film entitled Zimbabwe’s “Forgotten Children”, sponsored by the Aletheia Foundation that was founded by Brian Woods, Deborah Shipley and Jezza Neumann, which is affiliated with True Vision TV, was responsible for the development and launching of an education project at a rural school in Chinhoyi.
One of the architects of the project is a South African-born Caucasian named Nicky Wimble, who has worked with OXFAM and Comic Relief.
She is the daughter-in-law of the South African-born journalist Heidi Holland, who penned the book “Dinner With Mugabe: The story of a Freedom Fighter who Became a Tyrant”.
The film has aired on BBC several times and has received the USA Peabody Award, Broadcast Digital Award, Chicago Film Festival Gold Plaque,UK BAFTA Best Current Affairs Award and the Sony Impact Award to name a few.
The stars are three Zimbabwean children named Obert, Esther and Grace, who are forced to leave school due to rising tuition.
Obert is described as one of the most intelligent boys in school. His grandmother is shown pleading for mercy because they cannot afford the equivalent of 50 cents in US currency to keep the boy in school.
Young Obert states that poor children shouldn’t be chased away from school. Esther is a nine-year-old responsible for looking after her two-year-old sister and her mother who is dying from hiv-aids. The girl states that when her mother transitions, she will get into the grave with her.
We are told that Grace and her sister survive by searching for plastic bottles in rubbish dumps at the local market.
Another slant of propaganda the Aletheia Foundation used to make their point hit home was a timeline of Zimbabwe history and what they interpret as President Mugabe and ZANU-PF’s lack of a genuine commitment to the education of Zimbabwean children.
They begin by mentioning that after independence, education was prioritised and that President Mugabe is a teacher by training, the additional years targeted are 1988, 1995, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
In the opinion of the Aletheia Foundation, the down slide in Zimbabwe’s educational system began when school fees were introduced, making school unaffordable for poor families. However, they acknowledge that in 1990, Zimbabwe merged as the driving force behind education in Africa.
The next area of concentration is in 2000, when they state teachers began to flee the country due to political violence, which in code is a propaganda method to discredit the land reclamation programme, that based on their definition of education, should not be taught in Zimbabwean classrooms.
Their timeline also deliberately ignores the decision to send Zimbabwean teachers to Cuba. We are sure the Aletheia Foundation is well aware of how this training in Cuba is what catapulted Zimbabwe’s educational system, the best Mother Africa has to offer.
The next period is between 2007-2008, where they cite thousands of teachers are lost due to an economic crisis and schools were shut down in 2008. The timeline states that in 2009, over 90 percent of the rural schools were closed or abandoned and attendance was only 20 percent.
It is also highlights that schools hiked up teacher wages due to non-payment by Government. The final phase of the timeline mentions an improvement in O-Level examinations results and 2013 when organisations like the Aletheia Foundation stepped in to help children of this generation have a brighter future.
According to statistics used by the NGO Humanium that claim 15 percent of children in Zimbabwe do not attend school, more than three thirds of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition and the life expectancy of new-born children is the second lowest in the world.
Humanium even states that Zimbabwe has an extremely high rate of incarcerated minors, who are tortured for confessions from their parents. They also claim more than a quarter of girls under 18 are forced into marriage.
Before we address the root cause of the decline of the educational system in Zimbabwe, we must pose the question that President Mugabe would deliberately mastermind a campaign to destroy the cornerstone of the Second Chimurenga, that in the context of African social and human development stands alone?
When the right wing journalist Juan Williams wrote the book “Thurgood Williams: American Revolutionary”, he accidentally exposed that during the period Mr Marshall was in charge of the NAACP Legal Defence Fund. He provided the FBI a dossier on Robert Williams the President of the chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, who was pushed by the Ku Klux Klan to arm and train our people in the discipline of self-defence thanks to their naked terrorism and aggression.
This film and report by Humanium confirms that US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe have invested a lot of time in doing everything in their power to destroy the educational system and convince the world that President Mugabe and zanu-pf are to blame.
We must challenge the Children’s Defence Fund (CDF) led by the unassuming Marion Wright Edelman to come to Zimbabwe in order to study and reveal how sanctions not bad governance have compromised the educational system.
After the research has been completed, Dr Edelman should drop the final product in the lap of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a co-sponsor of the sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Thanks to CDF, it is common knowledge that so-called African American babies are born into poverty every 2,5 minutes and into extreme poverty every 4,5 minutes. Every day 597 so-called African Americans are born into poverty 310 of them are born into extreme poverty, 19 so-called African Americans die before their first birthday, which totals 6 973 babies each year.
When following Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois footsteps, Malcolm X let it be known that African nations look hypocritical when mentioning Apartheid in Southern Africa but ignoring the mistreatment of 22 million so-called African Americans living inside US borders.
If we apply this logic to today’s situation, we will create an atmosphere that will not only end the US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe, but put US-EU Imperialism on notice that the days of leaving African children for dead inside their borders are over.
Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent to The Herald and the External Relations Officer of ZICUFA (Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association). His email is [email protected]
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter