Our heritage has always been important to us

Dr Obert Moses Mpofu

Zimbabwe is our heritage. It is for all of us.

This is why it is prudent to jealously guard it for future generations.

We all must aspire to play our important and individual roles towards its success.

A nation’s path is often a construct of its people. Its success, therefore, is born out of their efforts.

The Zimbabwe we are aspiring for will be a product of all our collective efforts.

Those who are lost and seek to spread a nefarious agenda contrary to the national interest will have no place in a prosperous future in Zimbabwe.

They will be left behind and will not make it into the annals of history.

Those who will make it are the people who come together and chart a path for their nation. However, to move forward, one has to lean on the past.

For long, our heritage has not been given the prominence it deserves.

The colonialists successfully convinced our people that their culture and ways were not important and relevant.

We were conditioned to abandon our ways, which had sustained our people for centuries.

We had built our civilisations using our technology and had succeeded in building city-states that flourished.

So majestic were our civilisations that when the white men came, they were in awe and disbelief, and had a tough time admitting they had been built by indigenous people.

They could not fathom or comprehend our level of success.

We were quite advanced in our ways.

Up to now, they still have not comprehended how we have managed to flourish under difficult conditions of illegal sanctions.

Our cultural ways and heritage have always been important to us.

Our culture was the conduit through which knowledge was shared.

It was the glue that held our societies together. There was nothing evil about our ways.

While we focused on what the white men presented to us in terms of religion and “culture”, they siphoned off our resources, parcelling out our land and extracting minerals from our mines.

Their focus has now shifted to extracting the best minds from among us.  Indeed, the mind of the African still needs to be decolonised, and we endeavour to succeed in this quest.

The decolonising process is essential to correct past wrongs and chart a proper path for our nation.

Our people must understand our heritage and its importance.

It is this heritage that we must bequeath to future generations.

There is much work to be done.

Our esteemed First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa has been making concerted efforts to ensure that we bring back value to our ways. Her national dress has become a source of pride and the cookouts have conscientised our people as to the importance of eating healthy traditional food.

It is through such efforts that we rebuild parts of our culture that had been lost. Our people here in Zimbabwe built some of the most notable civilisations in Africa.

Religious indoctrination was weaponised; it was used as a tool for colonising our people. Indeed, the flag followed the cross.  Our culture was conveniently decimated by the colonialists, and we accepted foreign ways that played a part in our conquest. There is nothing evil about our cultural ways.

Our detractors made it a point to label everything about our culture as evil. This became the quickest and easiest way to divide and conquer us.

Relearning our ways is key to uplifting our nation.

As we build Zimbabwe, let us remember the ways of those who came before us. Let us get rid of all colonial remnants and tap into the same energy that was relied upon by those who founded our nation.

This is the thinking behind the “Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi balo” philosophy.

One may ask: Why is it important that we look within and build our nation ourselves? The idea is total emancipation.

Self-sufficiency will ensure that we guard against neo-colonialism and guarantee that our nation will never again fall into the wrong hands.

It is, therefore, important that, as we build this great nation, we get rid of all colonial remnants that still exist today.

We should glorify our own heroes and create more monuments that depict our history. We should tell our story ourselves.

Total emancipation can never be realised if we do not create a worthy heritage. We are at a turning point where we have now realised the strength we possess as a nation. This has been crucial in spearheading our nation’s growth.

At this crucial stage, we should, however, be wary of those who may seek to sow divisions among us.  Those who seek to fan non-existent tensions as a ploy to divide our nation will not succeed.

At the end of it all, those who will come after us will inherit riches and a successful nation.

Dr Obert Moses Mpofu is an academic and the Secretary-General of ZANU PF. He writes in his own capacity.