PROSTITUTION, drug and substance abuse, the correct approach to these societal ills is the one championed by the First Lady, Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa , an approach centred on the restoration of our cultural foundations. These pillars have been compromised, and as a result, the young people of this land, descendants of the great Munhumutapa, are being left adrift, disconnected from their heritage, purpose and future.
Reversing this tide is not impossible if, as the First Lady insists, we are committed to raising children with intention, guiding them along a moral path and, most crucially, helping them to understand who they are, what they are here for, and what purpose they serve in life.
When a child does not know who they are, they become aimless, vulnerable to every wind that blows, whether that wind carries them into drunkenness, drug addiction, sexual exploitation, or imprisonment. A society that fails to teach its children their identity and values is effectively denying them a future.
The First Lady is standing in that gap, correcting, educating and nurturing. She is reviving the core values of tsika namagariro, our cultural practices and norms, which serve as a fortress for both our young people and the larger community.
It is a deeply flawed ideology that claims that joblessness justifies drug abuse or prostitution. Our people have never accepted defeat. In our culture, we confront and overcome adversity; we are not conquered by it.
If your child takes to alcohol, drugs or transactional sex in the face of challenges, then the real failure lies in the upbringing, in not preparing them to face life head-on. The path of escapism only leads to deeper despair.
These vices are rampant in the West because the cultural systems there have failed. They lack the enduring values that sustain human dignity and responsibility. It is this cultural bankruptcy that is now being imported to poison our children. When we were raised in line with the values of our forebears, we responded to hardships with resilience and even fought wars for liberation. Our children today can make similarly noble choices if they are grounded in the same moral soil.
No culture that encourages self-destruction in the face of fear or challenge can lay claim to wisdom. If children crumble in the face of difficulty, the problem lies not in their essence but in their formation. A crucial part of their being was neglected or misdirected.
Girls especially are now being sold the lie that their purpose in life is to seduce a man who will fulfil all their material desires. The tools for this seduction? Skin-bleaching, provocative dressing, and cosmetic distortion. This is not empowerment; it is dehumanisation.
A girl’s value is not in her appearance or in attracting male attention. Her worth lies in being a full citizen, a contributor to Zimbabwe’s development, a visionary, a nurturer, a leader. Reducing her to an object of desire is a criminal betrayal of her potential.
In our culture, a girl is the most precious gem in society. She is not born to be exploited but to be respected and raised to embody the values that make families and nations strong. The prevailing Western ideology that encourages young girls to be sexual objects undermines this completely.
Among our people, a stranger has no business touching a girl. That kind of contact is offensive to her dignity. It is foreign to us. Our culture strictly forbids such behaviour:
“Unoda kuti murume wausingazivi akubate zvinogorevei?”
Why should someone who is not your husband touch you? It is not only unnecessary, it is unacceptable.
If these teachings were still upheld, our girls would be safe, protected by values that once held firm. Unfortunately, many now view these values as outdated. Yet, this dismissal of tradition has created the very moral and social crisis we now face.
Today, permissiveness has replaced responsibility. Children are allowed to do as they please, with no discipline or correction. But children need structure. They need values. Mothers must be raised to be women of strength, so they can raise upright children. How can we expect them to do this if they themselves are raised in vice from a young age?
It is not normal for a child to be sexually active at a young age. This behaviour is self-destructive, and society will pay the price. Pretending that it’s harmless so long as pregnancy is avoided is irresponsible. As a society, we must be clear: our values demand sexual integrity.
In Zimbabwean culture, the rules are not ambiguous. There is no room for sexual relationships outside of marriage. These are not just religious beliefs; they are practical safeguards for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of our people.
We are not a nation that should be swarmed by flies, as though we are rotting. But the truth is, the rot has set in because we have abandoned the values that once preserved us.
In the West, where children are allowed to grow without correction, we now see mass shootings, broken families, and widespread mental illness. We never used to have such issues among our people. Now, we are beginning to import these dysfunctions because we are abandoning our foundations.
Recently, a British teenager was sentenced to 49 years in prison for murdering his family and attempting to carry out a school massacre, all taught to him online. And they call this modernity? It is not advancement; it is decay. Once the injection is taken, it is only a matter of time before collapse.
They cultivated HIV, and now they claim to be saviours by creating jobs treating the disease. We reject this cycle. We believe that moral conduct can prevent most of the crises now treated as technical.
We are told not to moralise HIV or STIs, but without moral decay, how would these diseases spread? You claim it’s technical, but the reality is, values offer the best protection.
If you say morals don’t matter, explain how our schoolchildren are now pregnant in the thousands. The foundation — our moral core — collapsed, and now the consequences are spreading like wildfire.
In the name of freedom and progress, our children are being encouraged to bleach themselves, wear revealing clothes, and distort their identities. They are not being raised to be builders of a nation, but playthings for an increasingly predatory society.
And now, the very people who undermined our values pretend to be shocked by the results. But we are not fooled.
You told us children should never be disciplined. Don’t beat them. Don’t raise your voice. Just let them do as they please. And now you pretend to be surprised when the rot you planted bears fruit. You’ve turned the rotting of our children into a career path for yourselves , studies, funding, reports, workshops , all while our society burns.
Some NGOs are now lobbying to give our children contraceptives. Yet, they say they are against child marriages. What difference is there? You encourage promiscuity and then feign horror when it results in early pregnancies. You claim our children are already sexually active, so contraceptives must be the solution. But where did they learn this behaviour if not from the very media, books, and screens you promote?
Our culture never taught children about sex in this careless manner. It was sacred, taught in the right context, at the right time. Now, even toddlers are exposed to material they should never see. Our children have become the battleground of your ideological war.
This is not about science or technology. This is a moral and cultural war. It is about the soul of our children. They are not livestock. They are not biological objects to be managed with pills and devices. They are human beings with hearts and consciences. What you are doing to them will haunt them.
When they want to start families later, what will they build on? You are destroying the foundations. You have trained them to live as if there are no consequences. You cannot make them forget their souls.
You have created an industry around the harm you cause. Clinics everywhere. Treatments. Interventions. But what you offer is not healing. It is the continuation of an agenda that is corroding our society.
Our culture does not accept this. We do not celebrate girls painting their bodies, walking half naked, or mimicking foreign cultures. We do not teach girls to solicit male attention. We teach them to preserve their dignity, to be leaders, nurturers, and guardians of culture.
But now you are raising alarm over teen pregnancies the very result of the seed you planted. You fed them Western values and now pretend to be shocked when Western outcomes follow.
Our growth points and townships existed even in colonial times. People were poorer then, yet they were not morally bankrupt. Why? Because they were anchored in cultural values. We need to return to those roots.
What is happening to our children is preventable if we teach them who they are, if we rebuild the edifice that has crumbled. The First Lady is doing just that. But she is swimming against the tide, against NGOs and foreign values that preach freedom but deliver rot.
These foreign ideologies reduce our children to mere bodies. They strip them of spirituality, dignity, and humanity. But we of Zimbabwe know our children are more than flesh. They are spiritual beings, creations of Musikavanhu.
We want to raise children with unhu, with moral integrity. Only then can we build a Great Zimbabwe. We cannot do it with children fed on tablets and lies.
These children are not laboratory subjects for experiments. They are not animals whose reproduction must be controlled. They are future leaders, builders, mothers, and fathers.
You corrupted them and now want to bury them in contraceptives and false solutions. We say no. We know who we are, and we will fight to protect that.
Let us all, parents and leaders alike, rise and stand with Amai Mnangagwa to build a generation anchored in morality, culture, and purpose. Only then can Zimbabwe rise to its full glory.
