Online Reporter
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
I JUST finished reading an important ideological definitive text, “Socialism, Education and Development: A Challenge to Zimbabwe”.
The authors of the book, Dr Fay Chung and Emmanuel Ngara, belong to the pioneer group of our post-independence organic intelligentsia, whose academic work contributed to the formidable conceptualisation of what it means to be a State transitioning from colonialism and reasserting its liberation terms beyond remnant confines of being a colony.
The State and its intellectuals
Chung and Ngara (1985)’s work in mapping out State ideation can be linked to the formative national narrative framing developed by revolutionary intellectuals like Nathan Shamuyarira; Charles Utete; his successor, the former Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda; Stan Mudenge; and Henry Ushewokunze, among others.
These were among the leading nationalist intellectuals whose idea-making and philosophical-reflective milestones gave an ideological direction to the party and Government before and even after the signing of the Unity Accord. Such intellectuals gave sobriety to governance, hence Chung and Ngara make reference to Frantz Fanon’s problematisation of the nationalist project as marred by the independent State’s residual loyalties to colonial desires and designs of power.
The book was written and published at the peak of the ravaging instabilities of the 80s in Matabeleland and its release into the public domain was crucial in pacifying the colonial influence which formed the bedrock of this conflict.
Liberating the economy
The post-independence first-generation intellectuals’ contribution to the body of knowledge was more centred on paving the academic agenda-setting for moulding and upholding an anti-colonial national thinking for Zimbabwe’s hard-earned independence never to be under the capture of colonial monopoly.
Their contribution to the body of knowledge was consistent with the liberation conviction of the guerrillas who waged the war against the lethal Rhodesian forces, and whose zeal for a free Zimbabwe is captured in a ZANLA song:
Nyika yedu yeZimbabwe ndimo matakazvarirwa. Anamai nababa ndimo mavari. Tinoda Zimbabwe nehupfumi wayo wose. Simuka, Zimbabwe. (Zimbabwe is the country of our birth. This the land of our mothers and fathers. We love Zimbabwe and all its wealth. Rise up, Zimbabwe).
Such was the collective passion of the military, intelligentsia and esteemed masses of our people. The foundation of independence was the land and its wealth.
This explains the activist emphasis of text in issues of wealth distribution and eliminating greed and possibilities of the nationalist movement’s alliance formations with forces of capitalism.
Ideological rigour
Published in 1985, the book “Socialism, Education and Development” apexes the nexus between pedagogy formation and the ideological pillars for State self-reliance and continuation of the national liberation agenda of the 80s.
The themes of the book are obviously and befittingly so — discursively resident in the key fundamentals of scientific socialism which was reminiscent of the influence of Marxism in Zimbabwe’s attainment of independence.
In present-day nuances of State-thinking and general political thought, the underscore of Marxism has been demonstrated by the Chitepo School of Ideology’s curriculum, which is predicated on advancing “socialism with Zimbabwean characteristics”.
Such is the pervasive power of socialism which derives from the Maoist interventions to Zimbabwe’s freedom from colonial bondage in 1980. All thanks to the late liberation icon and first chairperson of the revolutionary mother-party of Zimbabwe’s liberation — the then ZANU, now ZANU PF. It was Cde Chitepo who midwifed the ideological and military alliance between ZANU and Chairman Mao.
Hence the gratitude of ZANLA through song to the teaching of Mao in the famous liberation hymn “Nzira Dzemasoja”.
Beyond the simplicity of a revolutionary mantra, Mao’s teachings became the manual for ZANLA’s military ideological foregrounding. The book beams the spotlight on the crucial terms of the national question as it relates to imperialism, neo-colonialism, ideological independence, development and pedagogical emancipation. The themes of the book are responsive to many pertinent needs of our society today, which is mostly polarised along decolonisation and neo-colonial asymmetries.
This explains why today ZANU PF suffers opposition mostly from a conglomerate of Western-backed media power, civil society and partisan forces.
With the apt ideological input of the first generation of post-independence pro-liberation intellectuals, clarity was proffered to engage the pertinent questions of the day.
Today, we have no clear, collective and pro-Zimbabwe ideological basis to define and defend the national prosperity which the Second Republic is developing.
Instead of locating the challenges of achieving our desired national development to the structural realities of inheriting a colonial State, we have a selective amnesia-laden academia whose submissions are guided by neo-liberal rationality to only associate Zimbabwe’s problems with corruption, violation of the rule of law and State-sponsored abdication of human rights.
Meanwhile, intellectual pretenders and their “We need new leaders” rhetoric are ignorant of the failed leadership renewal in the opposition.
The late Morgan Tsvangirai — the father of pro-West opposition politics — could not mentor a successor and “ruled” what was meant to be a pro-democracy benchmark opposition party to perennial factional degeneration.
He even ruled his party from his deathbed.
May God forgive him for bringing illegal sanctions to the people of Zimbabwe in defence of the West’s land looting and exploitation of our people.
De-Europeanising and de-Americanising Africa
Chung and Ngara’s offering can be situated within a localised re-reading and re-accentuation of the Paulo Freire (1970)’s world-class text to the “Wretched of the Earth” (Fanon 1961) titled “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.
Using a Latin American context, Freire posits that the oppressed (Global-South/Third World/post-colonies) must develop education systems which repair their dismemberment from colonial violence and control of knowledge production.
The victims of dispossession must map and own their redemptive path by creating education systems which decolonise, de-Europeanise and de-Americanise knowledge, power and being. Using this model, education must expose the evils of colonialism and emphasise the gruesome effects of neo-colonialism.
Education should be a shock-absorber to the perennial violence of imperialism.
Education must encourage economic self-liberation and innovation among the dispossessed. There must be an honest confrontation with imperialism from the academia.
The empire must be exposed for its ever-evolving evil and continued attack on the mission to decolonise Africa.
Unfortunately, this aspiration has been defeated by how colonialist States are now funding a decolonisation cosmetic and posturing academia whose inward thinking is predominantly neoliberal but outwardly ferociously looking anti-colonial.
They are propped up and branded as authorities on African politics and economics for pushing democracy and human rights debates anchored on demonising the post-colonial State, emphasising the “absence” of the rule of law in Africa and projecting Africa as the bedrock of all electoral fraud.
With the masses of our people enduring the continuity of impoverishment emanating from the legacy of colonialism and false-start effects of the post-colony in building resilient economies which are free from Western capital control, the deterioration of public welfare in the post-colony has created animosity between the State and the people, particularly the urban populations across Africa.
This explains why representative samples of violence, protests and boycotts are predominantly urban and not rural areas which are usually a bit far from the reach of neo-colonial Trojan horse civil society organisations’ reach.
Chung and Ngara call for a re-education of the people in a way that promotes active citizen engagement in values of freedom, equality, unity and development, as demanded by an organic and homegrown ideological position.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is Director (International Communication Services) in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. Feedback: rasmkhonto@gmail.com or rmahomva@icloud.com
