Zimpapers Logo

Ambassador Chris Mutsvangwa Correspondent
Heroism is about putting oneself to the prospect of ultimate harm for cause. It attains lofty heights when the cause is the defence of the motherland i.e. patriotism..

Between 1890-8 Zimbabwe lost its identity as a people among other earthly beings.

Africa had just been unlucky to remain a laggard as Europe leapfrogged into capitalism and the material abundance of the Industrial Revolution. The subsequent toll on the mother continent of humankind turned to be an onerous and hefty price to pay.

Slavery, divide and rule wars, internecine strife, imperial subjugation, arbitrary partition, sustained foreign rule followed by post colonial trauma. These were all the stock in trade of the colonial experience.

It is cold comfort that Africa just mustered that enough strength to escape the genocidal fate that beknighted the Native American ‘Red’ Indians and the Australian aborigines.

In all sincerity, this is no hyperbole especially in this southern tip of the continent. With its equable climate and bountiful resources there was every temptation to convert the Southern Africa into Little Europe.

As of 1890, Zimbabwe was caught up in this miasma of colonial and racist minority manacles for over seven decades.

Indeed this was a very dark spell. Through backwardness in technology , skills and organization, our heroic Shona and Ndebele wars of resistance waged between 1890 and 1896 collapsed into a bottomless pit of lost national self esteem.
Genufluction and obeisance were the new social order of the day of the day for the frightened and cowed indegene majority population.

Yet the memories of past heroism lingered and endured. Eventually they would resurrect a terrible new beauty.

The two European World Wars of the 20th Century paradoxically turned out to be a boon to the revival of African national consciousness.

In the 1960-70s, the majority African peoples began to rise, organize, agitate and assert.

A Europe sapped frightened debiltated by war had no option but relent. Imperial powers promptly divested themelves of colonial possessions.

Bucking against the decolonisation trend, Southern Africa opted to remain a redoubt.

By riposte, the newly freed African nations rose to this affront as they widened and deepened their solidarity against a dominant and miscreant imperial West. After all it stubbornly gave succour to racist and apartheid outposts of settler white minority rule.

The wheel of the long march began to turn full circle all the way to the robust redress of the military deficit that had spawned the original African misery.

This is the context of the exploits of the likes of Chairman Herbert Chitepo and General Josiah Magama Tongogara of ZANU and Comrades John Ziyapapa Moyo and Alfred Nikita Mangena of ZAPU and many other luminaries within the ambit of the national liberation movement of the subregion.

Cumulative confidence turned into an avalanche of defiant recruitment as of the mid-1970S. Loads of gratitude are owed to the 1974 victory by FRELIMO of Mozambique and MPLA of Angola.

Modern African warfare had thus drawn first blood against the scourge of centuries old colonial and later fascist rule of the imperial Portugal.

Africa had finally scored its first military victory against a modern European power from the NATO Alliance of the self-annointed Masters of the Universe.

No force henceforth could stand in the way of resurgent African military virility.

Acvordingly Zimbabwe youths did also threw down the gauntlet. The racist Rhodesian military as the cat’s paw of British imperial perfidy was thus poised to meet its nemesis head on, blow from blow.

The tens of thousands of ZANLA and ZIPRA recruits astounded the world by their massive response to the call to arms .

Even more awe-inspiring was their precipice steep learning curve of the art and science of modern warfare.

Once they were mobilized, nothing that the USA led NATO allies extended to Ian Smith and his apartheid cohorts in Pretoria was henceforth going to save the day for their beleaguered mith and kindred .

By 1979, the pitched battles of Mapai and Mavonde would seal the fate and military career of General Peter Walls of the much-vaunted white minority Rhodesian Army.

In total trepidation, imperial London had to hurriedly come to the rescue. The truce and peace agreement of the Lancaster House Conference was to serve as the on-ramp to the highway of Zimbabwe’s freedom and independence in April 1980. What had begun as a military adventure by the British Pioneer Column was to on the verge of eminent and unavoidable rout of the successor racist Rhodesian Army.

Along the route to victory, thousands from among the guerrilla fighters and their population supporters had perished from the asymmetrical military confrontation that was the CHIMURENGA-IMPI YOMVUKELA, that Zimbabwe version of a modern and scientific People’s War.

Thus Zimbabwe helped restore African pride as it wrought its annals of the continental legends of military prowess.

By the same token, a jaded apartheid military top brass in Pretoria was forced to review its doctrine of military invincibility.

A chapter of Indulgent allegiance to racist white military supremacy closed its curtain .

To much relief and joy, the National Liberation Movement of South Africa would romp to political victory wholly and finally spared of the needless pain, that waste of limb and life that is the baggage of war.

At long last the guns died down. Peace once again reigned atop a politically justice order of black African majority rule across the width and breadth of the Continent.

This 1994 whimpering death of the apartheid colonial minority thus opened a new and pleasing chapter of African military history. The military pearl that is the SADC Intervention Brigade is testament to the camaraderie which is now the hallmark of a subregion once blighted by invasions, raids and wholesale massacres.

Along the way impregnable bonds had been forged under the aegis of the Frontlines States and its Africa Union parent as well as the progressive global community. Also standing out was the Cuban military solidarity perched on the highest pedestal.

We celebrate Heroes and Defence Forces Day. Zimbabwe is into forty years of nationhood. Tragically the last two decades have since been consumed and burdened by the unrelenting and unremitting sanctions mercilessly and ferociously meted out by a vengeful and post imperial West.

Our bulwark of defence has been our implacable defiance emanating from our hearts of undaunted courage . YES! That spirit of the bravest of the braves that is the archetype of the Samora Machel- Sowero Generation of the 1970s. Certainly it is ever alive and thriving.

That Zimbabwe spirit of heroism helps us brush aside the rapacious detractors OF global resources gluttony. And the shameless cacophony of their retinue of apologists, puppets and sellouts from within and without the national body politic.

The Glorious 2017 November Revolution has thrown all of them asunder in frenzied pandemonium.

The ensuing policies and programmes that are the far reaching macroeconomic reforms of President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa with his Second Republic are busy hammering the final nails to the coffin of a bygone economic and business template. After all it harkened back to a past of exploitation by a colonial and settler racist minority.

A new economic Zimbabwe colossus, reminiscent of the glories of the legendary Munhumutapas is emerging out of the pupa of the moribund post-colonial economy.

No more of that perennial haemorrhage of the national stock of capital to the benefit of strangers from far off foreign capitals.

The omens are good. Just watch the instantaneous and ongoing national price stabilisation. All that owed to President Mnangagwa who signed off a masterstroke of well-appointed statutory instruments.
The high point has been the introduction of the free auction of foreign currency. This has displaced the arbitrary allocation template. Hitherto it has been the bane of the National Economy for the preceding 130 years of the history of the modern nation state of Zimbabwe. And about time indeed. Zimbabwe is once more a ‘normal’ economy to business entrepreneurship.

Hard work evincing acumen and risk in ensuing business ventures stands to be rewarded by a free interplay of market forces in an open and condusive environment.

As sure as the next sunrise, the Zimbabwe creative genius is poised to revive and strive.

The looming and imminent prosperity of Zimbabwe will now serve to atone for the the selflessness of the heroes and heroines to whom posterity owes so much.