LUPANE: Interfacing the Presidential Youth Interface
LUPANE — the unnamed colossus of Zimbabwe’s political memory in the heart of “Mathebeleland” North.
The province which housed a military regiment of the Ndebele Kingdom. The province of the veteran defender of the republic and late Vice-President of this land, Cde John Landa Nkomo. “Mathebeleland” North — the enduring emblem of the valiant cadreship and introspective loyalty to the republic of the former provincial chairman and the then Governor, Cde Welshman Mabhena.
Not to mention the revolutionary intellectualism thereof embodied in the guerilla academic personality of Ambassador Cain Ginyilitshe Ndabazekhaya Mathema, the current Minister of State for Provincial Affairs.
The same province of the gallant man of astute intellectual enigma, Professor Jonathan Moyo. So historic, so philosophical and so opulent a site of Zimbabwe’s political memory and a site of homogenous and split patriotic consciousness not to mention the cadreship that our struggle for sovereignty since time immemorial has produced.
Lupane — so historic a topography of purging the malodourous froth of coloniality in its early years when Rhodes had taken us all captivity and required from us a song. How could we sing that discorded ballad Rhodesians Nevers Die? Instead we sang in lamentation:
Kudala uyaphenduka
kudala kwakubusa uMambo loMzilikazi. Sawela kuTshangane saguqa ngamadolo
inkosi uLobhengula yasinyamalala mzukwana kusina lelozulu elikhulu yasinyamalala. Since that radical point of Black defiance, we stand resolute against all externally induced neo-colonial forces of regime change. What is intrinsic about the awash discourse of yearning for change — particularly the change of Government in Zimbabwe is that from the beginning this was about removing President Mugabe from power. This followed President Mugabe’s uncompromised protection of the masses’ wish to restore land ownership to the previously disenfranchised sons and daughters of the soil who were reduced by imperialism to be the “povo”.
As such, the Presidential Youth Interface is indeed more than an interface with the youth. It is a reclamation and a reassertion of the contested legacy of an African revolutionary stalwart whose life has only been committed to rewriting the lies of Rhodes’ conquest of the land of Kaguvi and Mzilikazi.
According to the mainstream, the Presidential Youth Interface is viewed as nothing, but the party’s interface with its internal feuds and putting mends to its fragments. In the eyes of our superficial left media, the Presidential Youth Interface represents the party’s self-rebranding strategy ahead of the 2018 elections.
However, the purpose of this article is to educate the miseducation of our left fourth-estate. However, it is important to bear in mind that our fourth-estate has no aorta of history, hence is not privy of the historical underlay of the President’s national convergence with the youth — the future of this country. This week’s article focuses on the significance of the fourth Presidential Youth Interface in challenging the oversupply of myths about the disintegration of the party in both private and public media.
President Mugabe’s interface with the youth marks our era’s return to history because this country was born out of the youth’s sacrifices to the struggle for liberation. The President’s “meet the youth” agenda is a return to the mobilisation strategies of the kwakunganje umhlaba Second Chimurenga which saw the then crop of young blood rallying around the anti-colonial project. Those of us who are acquainted with the heroic pilgrimage of our quest to be free would recall how Rhodesia’s tyranny nationally radicalised thousands of African youth to flee to neighbouring countries.
These same youth were internationally radicalised in the youth camps in Mboroma, Matenje, Chimoio, Freedom Camp to mention, but a few. Others were studying in exile to be professionals and doctors of independent Zimbabwe.
This crop of youth were the nerve centre of the anti-colonial revolution. However, this does not mean that during that era there were no traitors to the cause. There were those who fought on the side of the enemy; wined and dined with the enemy of course.
Even to this day as we strive to be decolonial there are those who remain penetrable to the grotesquely burgeoning force of coloniality which surfaces in pretentious undertones of democracy, peace-building and national healing.
This is why the President’s interface with the youth is met with vehement attack in the press, social media and other spaces of so-called “intellectual expression”.
It is only on this account which is lacking of the history of our national consciousness that many would think that the Presidential Youth Interface is a build-up to 2018. No! 2018 will tell. This is President Mugabe’s return to history and a way of reminding the young generation of its mandate to guard the sovereignty of the land and to be ideologically aligned to what makes us African. But why?
Mugabe is now every African who is opposed to the British and North American plunder and exploitation . . . So, old Mugabe here is not the person of Robert Mugabe. Rather it is that powerful, elemental African memory going back to the first Nehanda and even to the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians who are now reclaiming Africa in history as the cradle of humankind.
Zimbabwean opposition and their British, European and North American sponsors have exposed themselves as forces opposed to Mugabe as Pan-African memory, Mugabe as the reclaimer of African space, Mugabe as the African power of remembering the African legacy and African heritage which slavery, apartheid and imperialism thought they had dismembered for good. It is not accidental that both the opposition to Mugabe and its sponsors sought to denigrate African liberation history as outmoded and undemocratic traditions.
The Presidential Youth Interface is a reminder that the land reform programme was no mistake and that indigenising the economy remains a mandate of the country’s youthful patriots and in his words, His Excellency is quoted:
“Now we must remain united, this is our country. Let us not lose our land. Losing our independence means losing our land and wealth. We must not lose it, let us be owners of the land, not slaves of the white men but owners of our land to produce our food and build our houses on our land.”
In the same vein, President Robert Mugabe implored those in the diaspora to be compelled by patriotism and loyalty to the country to invest at home. This is because the country’s thought-power is drained out of the country and building economies of our former exploiters. The President emphasised the need for repatriating craft competence to revamp the country’s industry, commerce, mining and manufacturing sector.
President Mugabe’s conversation largely indicated the future depends on the youth as they can take up any challenge and become their teachers’ teachers, “Even if we are your teachers . . . today you are teaching us a lesson that we can raise crowds and crowds of unity”.
The Presidential Youth Interface poses as the party’s introspection in the face of peddled propaganda of failure and internal incoherence within Zanu-PF as aptly explained by anti-Government publicists. The President applauded the Youth and Women’s league for being a symbol of unity in the party and the same time surreptitiously rebuking the Main-wing for raffling instincts of factionalism over loyalty in the party and the confidence of the electorate in the President, “Look at what the youth are able to do.
They are united! No factions, no backbiting, no desire at the moment to be successors when the President is still there. The youths are saying no, the women are saying no, all you who are here are saying no, so who are you to say I must go?” asked the President.
Reverting to nation-building and national development beyond the party’s mandate to be united, President Mugabe emphasised that:
“If ever development is to take place, there is need for unity, unity and unity of purpose, no to individualism — that my, me mentality. So there must be unity in all party wings, provinces, all Zanu-PF structures and the country as a whole. We are all Zimbabweans. Move out of the country and you can’t tell them that I am Ngwenya or any other name, you say I am a Zimbabwean. That unity is what Umdlala (Joshua Nkomo) wanted.”
Therefore, it is clear that the fourth Presidential Youth Interface was Cde Mugabe’s reclamation of history and situating it in the present to caution those entangled in the lost agenda of dismembering the values of the republic.
The interface is a revisit to the values of unity and national youth and an absolute expression of how the youth have the capacity to bring those values to life by going beyond the narrow misrepresentation of Zanu-PF as a party is in a precarious threshold of extinction as a result of the impending factional demise.
So Lupane affirmed that Zanu-PF draws its power from a solid foundation of history which is wholly grounded in public loyalty and citizen endorsement as explained by the President:
“My heart is overwhelmed, overwhelmed by your love and generosity, by your confidence and belief in me. After all, I am your President. I know I have your support, I don’t have just two supporters like other parties, but the whole country.”
The Presidential Youth Interface in Lupane reflected that Zanu-PF’s power resides in public affection and the youth in particular. This compels one to revert to the bible; “What has been hidden from the wise and prudent (Old-Guard) shall be revealed to the babes and sucklings.