Chitepo’s review of the Thursday 28 April1966 Chinhoyi Battle in his 1973 address to Australians shows that he did not miss the thing about education: We didn’t really make much progress in those battles. We got a lot of press publicity, but we didn’t really make much progress. We realized before very long why we hadn’t made very much progress.

It was because there had not been a complete hug between the freedom fighters and the masses of the people in Zimbabwe. And, it is for that reason that during the period that followed, we concentrated on a regime of political education of the masses, to get them to appreciate the goals that the struggle was aiming at; to be fired by the new vision of a new Zimbabwe and to participate in its realization and to realize that the realization of the new Zimbabwe, the new vision that we tried to sell, which we tried to inspire in their hearts could only be achieved by struggles which involved life and death; by armed struggle.

Thursday 28 April1966 was two years after the majority of the founding nationalists had been imprisoned by Ian Smith. Thursday 28 April1966 was also, curiously, the 68th anniversary of the close of the First Chimurenga with the execution of the spirit mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi and other leaders who had championed the resistance to occupation on Wednesday 27 April 1898. The calendars of 1966 and 1898 are one and the same. By the time the Chinhoyi battle was fought to kick off the Second Chimurenga, education of the founding nationalists imprisoned by Ian Smith was already in progress and unopposed by those who had jailed them. The prison authorities would religiously facilitate the relevant long-distance schooling to the extent that when the prisoners were finally released, they would be far more ‘educated’ than those who had supervised it under lock and key.

The same would be the negotiators of the peace at Lancaster in 1979. Meanwhile, outside prison, intelligent students identif ied as having nationalist leanings were being ‘expelled’ from the University of Rhodesia and mission schools and getting ‘awarded’ scholarships to continue their studies in prestigious Western institutions of higher learning like Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard without paying a cent. And, it is pertinent to point out that this was at a time when descendants of African slaves in Britain and America who deserved that education as reparatory affirmative action were being denied the same privilege. They are still being denied reparatory education grants while regime-change African student activists, championing the recolonization of Africa, are being granted political asylum to access education grants in western institutions of higher learning in the countries that formerly colonized Africa. And the scandal is not ending there.

The same countries are sponsoring peace and governance studies in African universities. These are programs surreptitiously meant to make African students understand peace and governance from the perspective of the former colonizer and not from the perspective of those Africans who had to f ight the colonizer to get the inalienable right to self-determination sanctioned by the United Nations Human Rights Charter. And on the ground Chitepo’s ‘regime of political education of the masses, to get them to appreciate the goals that the struggle was aiming at … could only be achieved by struggles which involved life and death; by armed struggle’ was underway. And, the revolutionary institution of higher learning was called Pungwe.

In essence it was the first Chitepo School of Ideology. Patterns in the 135 year long historical context of struggle show that Pungwe as a school was the most organized, most effective and most purpose-driven organ of education that was ever created in the history of Zimbabwe. And this is in the sense that it is the only such education that ever made the people to voluntarily accept death as the price of the life they wanted not just for themselves but for posterity. Incidentally, that is how the very same Chitepo, who advocated that education, paid the ultimate price for Zimbabwe’s sovereignty. That is how many more who had been educated to accept the vision of a free Zimbabwe as a matter of life and death also met their fate at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembwe, Mkushi, Mlungushi, Freedom Camp, Chibondo and Butcher Farm among other countless sites of struggle. Lucky survivors of battles and assassination attempts also have a lot to tell the education that drove them.

Pungwe was an education instituted to mediate and contest subversive missionary education and it was successful to the point of forcing the enemy to the negotiating table. Pungwe was not haphazard education. It was self-knowledge effort preceded and informed by real f ield research where freedom fighters went onto the ground and talked to the peasants ‘affected, and hurt and injured more than any other group on land issues, … the ordinary man and woman … living on a plot of land in his country’ … the man who had lived on a piece of land, cultivated, built his home and reared his cattle, and goats and sheep in the same piece of land (and then) suddenly woke up to be told by a European who had come from afar kuti: “No you are a tenant now. You are a squatter. You must now pay rent to me.

If you don’t pay rent to me, you must work for me as a kind of payment for continued residence in my plot. You are nothing. You are now in effect my chattel.”’ And yet when the day of reckoning came, the same Pungwe education that made the masses APPRECIATE THAT THE GOALS THAT THE STRUGGLE WAS AIMING AT … COULD ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY STRUGGLES WHICH INVOLVED LIFE AND DEATH was, ironically, killed by the goal of independence.

The post-independence establishment neglected to build on the proven potential of the Pungwe education template to get the masses to appreciate and sustain the legacy of revolutionary armed liberation struggle. Ironically, the post-independence establishment built on the missionary education template and achieved an amazing above 92% ‘literacy rate’ that is still being celebrated as the highest in Africa and among the best in the world. The catastrophic result of the omission to build on the proven potential of Chitepo’s regime of political education template, to get the masses to appreciate and sustain the legacy of revolutionary armed liberation struggle, has been the development of our institutions of learning into nurseries of western-sponsored opposition parties whose mantra has been, ‘Tidzoserei patakanga takasungirirwa.’

In the foregoing context, the boast of an above 92% best literacy rate that yet contests the struggle that made it possible actually translates to the celebration of a ‘successful disaster’. It is a non-functional ‘best literacy rate’ with no commensurate development on the ground. It is pertinent to draw attention to just how the struggle for Zimbabwe is replete with such ironies, only visible as a pattern on the longer view; a pattern of tragedies that have kept piling on same sites of struggle. In respect of this, it is the view of this write-up that irrefutable patterns of history translate to irrefutable experience-based evidence or blueprints that are indispensable in determining survival policies. And, it must be added that, only conscious survivors recognize the benefit of the longer view. Only conscious survivors can bring the longer view into their reading of the present.

A critical irony in the history of the struggle for Zimbabwe is how a good part of the first cabinet and parliament and technocrats were made up of former political detainees and prisoners in whom the colonial system had invested long distance higher education on a British curriculum supervised by the British. Incidentally, it is important to point out that Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was set in the Cold War era that polarized the world between the imperialist/capitalist West and the communist/socialist East. In Southern Africa, the paradigm manifested as armed liberation struggles pitting Western-backed white settlers defending western imperial interests against Eastern-backed Africans fighting for self-determination. The point being made here is that while the Eastern bloc was training the fighters in African liberation struggles, the Western bloc was apparently educating the nationalist leadership and technocrats in prison, in convents and abroad.

The expectation was that the education would translate to a western-biased mindset or worldview that would compromise THE GOALS THAT THE STRUGGLE WAS AIMING AT without the victims of the subversion being aware. And, it was an expectation obviously premised on the liberation movements’ principle of politics leading the gun. Inconsistencies in the longer view confirm the foregoing proposition. The ‘educated’ black victims of white settlers would agree that they were fighting the system and not those championing the system. And this was notwithstanding concurrent Afro-American civil rights protests that saw the assassinations of Malcom X (21 February 1965) and Martin Luther King (4 April 1968) almost 200 years after the 1776 American Declaration of Independence that had upheld the equality of men as self-evident.

The ‘educated’ black victims of white settlers would again, believe that it was barbaric to attack a hospital or school in Rhodesia knowing everyone in there was white. Even after the wholesale massacre of African children at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembwe, Mkushi, Mlungushi and Freedom Camp by white racists and African traitors who knew that everyone in those camps was black.

They would speak out against the downing of the Rhodesian Viscounts carrying enemy reservists. Even after the enemy had used civilian aircraft to spy Nyadzonia and ruse Chimoio! All these are instances that give credence to the suggestion of the colonial investment in native education to compromise the goals the liberation struggle was aiming at. And, indeed, what happened at the 1979 Lancaster peace talks fits into the same paradigm. The three-month long 1979 Lancaster House Peace Talks would not be between the British and the fighters whose Eastern bloc guns had forced them to the negotiating table.

The three-month long talks would largely be between the British and the nationalist leadership they had educated in prison, in convents and in their most prestigious institutions of higher learning that included Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard. In clinical terms, the peace agreement signed on 21 December 1979 missed the critical GOALS THE STRUGGLE HAD AIMED AT – the goals that had mobilized the people to accept the struggle as a matter of life and death. In moral terms, the outcome was also inconsistent with the price of life and death that had been faithfully invested to force the peace talks. It was a political compromise that secured only the rough changes and not the revolution that had been advocated in Chitepo’s regime of political education of the masses to get them to appreciate the goals that the struggle was aiming at. Chitepo had said: The ultimate goal in political terms is majority rule. The ultimate goal even in economic terms is the abolition of systems of exploitation. That means, all faces of the capitalist structure of society in Rhodesia. We don’t merely seek a so-called rough change in society in Zimbabwe. We are seeking what we sometimes describe as a systemic change. We want to change the whole system. We want revolution. By revolution, we understand a turning of the wheel. We want to turn it right over.

To get an entirely new society based on no exploitation, true equality and true justice for all. BUT, the peace agreement with the nationalist leadership educated by the British in prison, in convents and abroad ‘secured’ 20 disproportionate legislative seats (i.e. 20%) for white settlers constituting less than 4% of the population in Zimbabwe. It secured, for the less than 4% white settlers, property rights to over 70% of prime agricultural land acquired through genocide. The same land that had been the cause for war. Chitepo had explained: I think everybody who knows about revolution knows that revolution has been about land everywhere in the world. It is about land because land is the thing on which you live. You build your house on it; you get your food from it. Life is sustained on the land, and without it you are really facing death. That is what revolution is about. And, it was a perspective Joshua Nkomo would echo in his disappointment at the Lancaster Conference in 1979: The war in Zimbabwe is about land. And this is where we find Britain unable to yield to the popular demand of our people; so popular that they had to sacrifice their lives to get this thing, that is land… What Britain has done (is) they have placed land as property in the bill of rights and used the bill of rights as a bill of privileges.

I am saying this because land is owned by the white minority because of their privileged position. They never bought that land. They acquired it by force of arms. And, any money transaction that has taken place, it has been between white man and white man so that we couldn’t be expected to pay for that land. The western-educated generational victims of colonial dispossession agreed to the willing-buyer willing-seller arrangement to acquire land for which over 50 000 patriots had already paid the ultimate price.

The Roman Catholic Church would be invited to bless the independence. And, this was notwithstanding the church’s role in championing the slavery of the whole black race; notwithstanding the same church’s role in the colonial occupation of Africa and the execution of the heroes of the First Chimurenga. It is needless to mention that the invitation of the Catholic Church, to bless Zimbabwe’s independence, translated to a spiritual exclusion of the heroes of the First Chimurenga whose spirits had been invoked to mobilize support as well as fighters in a move that made the Second Chimurenga a generational sequel to the First Chimurenga. There, apparently, is no euphemism decent enough to tone down the unfortunate meaning of the error of judgment. After independence, the new establishment maintained the grave of homosexual Rhodes in the sacred Matopos.

The sanctity of that most sacred space in Zimbabwe remains defiled by the homosexual obscenity right to date while the remains of the heroes murdered by the same criminal remain archived as trophies of conquest in British museums. Again, the effect of the whole arrangement in de-legitimizing the ‘armed’ liberation struggle seems not have been fully appreciated. Even in the context where the call that RHODES MUST FALL has come to haunt the full extent of the former British empire! While, across the planet, generational victims of the imperialist are pulling down mere statues of the homosexual, we are continuing to, not only give value, but hold onto the remains in circumstances that soil, in the most harmful sense, the very soul of Zimbabwe.

And, today, the endemic resurrection of the spirits of war veterans identifying their remains for proper burial foregrounds the same tragic irony. After decades of no tangible national policy being worked out to handle their condition with deserving honour, they have taken the initiative and now want just two square metres of burial space in a land that was ‘freed’ at the cost of their lives. It is pertinent to repeat that those who paid the ultimate price now want only two square metres of burial ground from that land! Only two square metres! The post-independence establishment would pay pensions to those who had fought against black majority rule and procrastinate on the same arrangement for those who had fought and won the black majority mandate to make decisions consistent with the logic of armed liberation struggle.

President Mugabe, would be knighted in the ultimate of all ironies because British knighthood is an award given in recognition of outstanding service to the British Empire. It would then not be far-fetched to assume that in that context, the Lancaster House Peace Agreement and the associated Lancaster House Constitution translated to outstanding service to the British Empire. The Commander-in-chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces that contested ‘British imperial interests’ in armed struggle accepted the honour.

He would be de-knighted for taking the land. And, to date, many have still not recognized the knighting and de-knighting as a critical blue-print in the way our struggle must be understood. All the foregoing ironies, discrepancies, contradictions or inconsistencies show that colonial education was the greatest and most secure investment Western imperialism ever committed to Africa – an investment specifically designed to continue to hold fort long after the guns had gone silent; an investment specifically designed to ‘auto-pilot’ interests of western imperialism even when the missionaries no longer had boots on the ground.

The converse is also true. It is Chitepo’s mass education in survivors that exposes the ironies, discrepancies, contradictions or inconsistencies in HD. And yet, the concession must be made that, perhaps, the foregoing has been possible because the majority of us Zimbabweans were educated from the British imperial template at different time settings. And because of that, we all carry different depths of damage; different depths of depersonalization and different depths of blindness to our shortcomings. The different levels of damage have determined degrees to which we are acquiescent to the lessons proffered by history. The rear-guard function of the colonial education template manifests in different forms in all of us. Few people (if any) are immune.

It is especially currently telling in how the British curriculum has been re-embraced as a status symbol. It is telling in how Zimbabwean schools are advertising the British Cambridge curriculum to educate generational victims of British colonization not to stay and build a sovereign Zimbabwe but to leave and be caregivers to the ‘retired’ champions of British imperialism in Africa.

What has been totally missed by policy makers is that no curriculum is designed for its own sake. All education is interest-based and not neutral. And what this essentially means is that curricula are instruments of self-determination. Curricula are critical life and death choices. What has been totally missed by indigenous policy makers is that a curriculum is the platform through which a nation determines what it wants to be.

The content determined by curricular is a choice that cannot be haphazardly made. It is a choice that must be meticulously designed into the knowledge-base that pre-disposes recipient citizens to view and interpret the world through a common ideological lens that must be sensitive to their interests.

This is how education translates to a majority mindset or worldview. This is how education is used to sustain paradigms of both sovereignty and servitude. And the fact that the champions of education in Zimbabwe and the elite who include policy makers are actually the main patrons and sometimes the owners of the private schools that offer enemy curricular is a sign of how deep the damage has sunk. More importantly, it is a sign of how all worldviews carried in education come with an intrinsic self-preserving blindness to the potency of contesting or alternative views. In local universities, programs in peace studies are foreign sponsored and designed to serve a regime-change agenda. Anti-Zimbabwean political activists in institutions of higher learning are also seeking and getting political asylum in hostile countries to access education grants to do the same regime-change studies.

The View Across 135 Years Of Struggle

The year 2025 is 8 years after Operation Restore Legacy; 45 years after independence; 50 years after the death of Chitepo; 59 years after Chinhoyi; 127 years after the execution of the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi; and 135 years after colonial occupation. We have the advantage of a longer view, internet, satellite television, Email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. The view across 135 years of struggle puts in our hands enough history to identify failures and successes we can translate to a blueprint with which to make informed decisions regarding a meaningful future for the nation; a blueprint with which we can objectively determine priorities in national research and development so that they are driven by cost-saving necessity and not indulgent wishful thinking.

It is the only way Nyika ingavakwe nevene vayo. The view across 135 years of struggle must force us to concede that the champions of the First Chimurenga operated on a time frontier without the benefits of the longer view that we now have; a time frontier where they encountered all enemies on a first-time basis without precedents to guide their reaction. They were not part of the European imperial information age and did not know that their Africa had already been shared among Europeans in 1884 Berlin, Germany. We must concede that in all fairness, history cannot indict their uninformed reactions.

Any legacy from them to us can only be a blueprint made in their own blood; a blueprint that sanctifies their sacrifice. We must equally concede that any indictments against the founding nationalists of Zimbabwe are mitigated by the fact that they had no other starting point but the very same missionary education intended to subvert them. It is education that came with an intrinsic self-preserving blindness to the validity of alternative views. This means that the liberation struggle they initiated actually translated to an extraordinary breach of that blindness; more so, the Pungwe education template to get the people to appreciate the goals that the struggle was aiming at.

It was an extraordinary breach that deserves due acknowledgement. Conversely, history has ample reason to indict survivors whose benefit of the longer view, internet, satellite television, Email, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. gives them the choice to eliminate or mitigate recurrent tragedies but simply choose not to.

It must also be conceded that the patterns of history located in 135 years of struggle against the hazards of western imperialism, right up to date, are perhaps the reality of the idiom: ‘Chinamanenji hachifambisi. Chinomirira kuti mavara acho ose aonekwe.’ It is an idiom that predisposes us to look back at our whole history of struggle as a laboratory of human experience; a laboratory in which everything we went through was an experiment; a laboratory in which no experiment was a failure; a laboratory in which every one of our experiences was an experiment that confirmed a survival truth. And, the dominant and alarming as well as, not alarming truth seems to be that, whatever local explanations we might have for the inconsistent outcomes of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle, they are outcomes that perfectly replicate (to the letter!) outcomes of other black liberation struggles in over 500 years of world history. And, the collective outcomes, in turn, alarmingly fit British historian, Arnold Toynbee’s definition of the word ‘native’ whose citation by Chitepo has already been given.

The enslavement and colonization of black people for over 500 years; the denial of their rights to reparations; the violations of their sovereignty with impunity; their denial of a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, all add up to the logical development of that racist definition of the word ‘native’. And, if anything, it all points to a macro-failure by black people to read and abstract functional self-knowledge from the lived patterns of their own historical experience.

It is a macro-failure that must conscript all patriotic African media to a search and rescue operation that re-visits all sites of African struggles in history to recover whatever useful meanings can be salvaged in order to build a functional, self-saving survival consciousness that puts a stop to fratricidal fights over superficial differences. One hundred and thirty-five years of struggle have surely confirmed that weakness invites predators. They have surely confirmed all our follies and strengths.

They have surely confirmed all our fair-weather and all our all-weather friends. Above all, they have confirmed the indispensability of a PATRIOTIC FRONT and unity. Can we not now say that the whole experience translates to a blueprint – the blueprint that requires us to re-deploy Chitepo on a second regime of political education of the masses to get them to appreciate the goals that the struggle originally aimed at? Let us see in the Chitepo manifesto a battle station we can deploy on a search and rescue interrogation of all the sites where we have struggled to give sustainable meanings to our sovereignty for purposes of securing the liberation of the whole African race; a battle station we can assign to ‘Let no one who is negative want to spoil what we are doing for ourselves in order to unite Africa.’