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Institutions like Great Zimbabwe University must strive to come up with a home-grown curriculum to produce a new Zimbabwean, a home-grown scholar

Jaram Nyathi Group Political Editor
THE greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, Steve Biko. This is a statement I love to refer to because it is, as they say, pregnant with meaning, it’s full of portents, and, perhaps, sums about everything that’s kept Africa behind even as it is said to be rising. The steps are slow, laboured.

More often than not, we are plodding and pursuing a mirage, an illusion laid before us as a thoroughfare to the good life tantalising so seductively from the West.

That is why Biko’s indicting statement is so powerful, so revealing and should be a motto for every school seeking to teach our children to understand who we are, where we are and why, where we want to be and how we can map the road towards that vision, and to detox the mind of those already so colonised they can’t envisage a better future for Africa without Europe and America’s poisoned hand-holding.

Zimbabwe’s mind has remained in captivity for far too long. Attempts to break out of this captivity were made in the euphoria of independence in the early 1980s when the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU) was established within the University of Zimbabwe campus.

The unit soon met its grief in 1989.

The project sought to come with a home-grown curriculum, a new Zimbabwean, a home-grown scholar. As always, there were challenges. It was difficult to wean people from Cambridge, from the “tried and tested” British system which had become, and still is, second nature to most of us. Witness the fierce resistance to the localisation of examinations.

Today the Cambridge syllabus is still the preferred route to Shangri-la.

Now it does appear that there are tentative efforts once again to come back home. President Mugabe recently stated that there was need to pay more attention to practical subjects/education in our curriculum. That has forced a re-look at the Nziramasanga report of 1999. What did it recommend, how much of that is still relevant and how much adaptation do we need?

What am I saying?

That Zimbabwe is in a serious state of emergency. We are behaving as if we control the world and everyone is at our beck and call. That as a nation we have to revisit our history and its spirit of sacrifice. There is a need for a strong ideological foundation to the new Zimbabwean in a world where competition for the control of natural resources and information intensifies every day. Again this was tried earlier through a national youth service policy. The policy drafted in 2000 was revised in 2013 with input from all the political parties in the inclusive Government then. Its key motivation was to bring up a conscious Zimbabwean regardless of political affiliation.

It was to produce a Zimbabwean who appreciates the national interest, our history, our values, our aspirations, understands what the national priorities are and how he can be of value to his community, what solutions he can bring to the everyday challenges; to paraphrase JF Kennedy’s immortal exhortation to fellow Americans in his inaugural address in 1961, to bring up a Zimbabwean who asks not what his country can do for him, but what he can do for his country.

This attitudinal change brings with it a whole new outlook at the challenges we face. It bids us look inward, not outward, for solutions. Help from outside should only be complementary to internal efforts. And solutions don’t always come from leaders. Leaders should only inspire.

Listen to Churchill, addressing the House of Commons when Britain faced its darkest hour and everyone was terrified to hell of a possible invasion and defeat by Nazi Germany; “I would say to this House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Leaders should not promise people candy and manna, and people should never be made to expect them. How does a Government create 2,2 million jobs in five years while people sit and wait? Zimbabwe is not some latter-day Garden of Eden.

For far too long Zimbabweans have been fed on a diet of consuming instead of producing, a diet of expectation instead of creation, a diet of receiving instead of giving. We have become the world’s most famous idlers. We have to reunite with the spirit which inspired our freedom fighters to sacrifice for the common good. Zimbabwe should not be a post-colonialism colony of other nations. We have lost our pride, a belief in ourselves and are prepared to turn Judas Iscariot at the whiff of a dollar. We love to fool ourselves, to nurse and nurture an illusion of being well educated, special even. We are a fool who as yet doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. It’s time we woke up from dreamland.

This is my point. I don’t believe that education without strong ideological content is of sustainable use to a developing nation. It gives a dangerous illusion of progress. People boast about degrees without the slightest appreciation of what their country’s priorities are. By education I include technical education. Education should be people-oriented, not a status symbol.

And here is why.
Since before independence our education has produced people who love the neck-tie and despise physical labour. We even despised the white commercial farmer in his khaki shorts and farmers’ shoes, yet he was one of the richest men in town; yes, from tilling the land, from dirt. We hate sweat.

The result is a disconcerting paradox. The European entrepreneur and elite leave their country to go and conquer territories and find markets far afield.

Our African elite go to Europe to enjoy the easy, a good life made possible by the adventures and sacrifices of his European counterpart. We love to manage what other people have sacrificed to create because we are idle species. Our people, for their part, look at those who have made it in Europe in awe.

But let’s face the facts. What are you adding to the body of knowledge by being a pilot for British Airways, Emirates or KLM? Individually they can employ you and pay you well because they didn’t have to invest resources in your education, but poor peasants back home did. And while you are up in the air, those who created the A320 are researching better machines for you to fly without adding any value. In short, we train engineers, architects, doctors, actuaries, lawyers and accountants to go and be mere managers or pilots in Europe instead of developing their own nations.

And the Europeans are unrelenting in making sure they maintain the upper hand over us. Every year America and Britain offer lucrative scholarships to our brightest students to study in their countries. Those who stay after the training, are good investment; those deployed back home are an even better asset, they are the strictest enforcers of the codes and systems which ensure Africa’s perpetual dependency. They are the contacts, the eyes and ears of the master, because they are so ideologically alienated from the motherland it is hard for them to realise they are doing harm to their country. They are following “international best practice”.

Finally, what meaneth the eerie silence on the motives for seed donations by the First Lady?

Why are such donations conveniently called “election buying” when made around election time? Are the easy, convenient analyses being exposed for their shallowness, for their opportunism? Is charity only philanthropic when doled out by foreigners? Why do foreigners never have base motives, that unique quality seemingly reserved solely for Zimbabwean politicians?

The First Lady seems to have disarmed the vote-buying brigade, for not only is she already assured of her elevation to lead the Women’s League in December, the next national elections are four long years away.

Come 2018!