Mthwakazi’s future lies beyond the mere schooling of masses; it lies in the education of the Mthwakazi masses. While Zimbabwe’s education system has been good enough to empower some individual Mthwakazians, it has been an equally effective tool in the disempowerment of the Mthwakazi society. Mthwakazi’s acquired ignorance and not Zimbabwe’s monopoly on military resources is now the latter’s strength in maintaining its grip on the former.
Right now, education is the most potent statutory instrument that legally affords Zimbabwean authorities the right to impose ignorance among Mthwakazians. Thus, far from misguided calls for military solution, it seems more realistic and logical that the battle for the restoration of Mthwakazi must be waged and won in the education system.
At present Zimbabwe runs a tightly controlled education system through which the state monopolises the curriculum, denies Mthwakazi society the right to determine what their children should learn at school and how they should learn. The curriculum has been hijacked by the ZANU PF political agenda mooted and scripted in their infamous 1979 Grand Plan document. Harare has, through its constitutional legitimacy, imposed controversial and false content in the history syllabus.
History lessons bear testimony to ZANU PF’s ideological slant; the lessons are delivered through an elaborate filter of politically correct perspectives that not only ignore the existence of an independent Mthwakazi state but also seek to relegate the political and military contribution of Mthwakazians to the Black Nationalist movement during the colonial period to nothing short of mere guest appearances.
Through the education system ZANU PF steadily manufactures and maintains a Shona-orientated socio-cultural system across the unitary Zimbabwe state consequently promoting active ignorance disguised as education among Zimbabweans and Mthwakazi citizens.
The primary role of the Zimbabwean education is to enable Harare to intrude into Mthwakazi culture, shape and reshape the basic norms and values of Mthwakazi. The system filters all essential, significant and positive attributes of Mthwakazi in order to undermine the social and political institutions of Mthwakazi.
It is therefore not a coincidence that the entire educational and professional training system is in practice not accountable to Mthwakazi citizens but to Zimbabwean bureaucrats who oversee not only the recruitment of staff but also what is being taught and how it is taught. This network has to date – through teaching children what to think and not how to think – successfully created submissive and dependent Mthwakazians.
The education of Mthwakazians is too important a role to be left to the Zimbabwean state. I have thus figured out that if Mthwakazi is to avoid Zimbabwean schooling getting in the way of the education of her children, Zimbabwean schools, colleges and universities as currently constituted should not be entrusted with the responsibility of educating our children.
Libraries must be the primary source of our children’s education and access to these institutions must be the preoccupation of all citizens irrespective of the cost. This must not be confused with a call for the withdrawal of our children from schools; indeed, Mthwakazians need to attend the Zimbabwean public institutions and acquire academic qualifications but above all they must use libraries to unlearn myths propagated by the Zimbabwean school system. In short, for Mthwakazian children to be functional to Mthwakazi and dysfunctional to the Zimbabwean colonial system they need libraries to liberate them from the ignorance imposed by the education system.
Silence and inaction have not been golden; they are instead becoming an act of betrayal in the fight for Mthwakazi independence. Zimbabwe is not interested in and will not oversee Mthwakazi advancement; it is up to Mthwakazians to act now. Mthwakazians need not await for politicians and/ or political organisations for solutions to important public problems; the education system must be accountable to parents not politicians or bureaucrats. If Mthwakazians cannot wrestle control of the public education system, they surely can organise themselves, create and fund local educational programmes and equip local libraries and most of all, keep the doors open to every child. The future of Mthwakazi lies in the nurturing of a generation of independent thinkers; individuals who will be dysfunctional to the Zimbabwean colonial system.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 