The need for fidelity, excellence in leadership

WE OFTEN make the mistake that the land we live in is an inheritance from our ancestors, and it is from this logic that we did not take kindly to colonial conquest.

While our ancestry truly gives us entitlement to the land of Zimbabwe, the truth about the land is that we have borrowed it from posterity, from generations yet to be born. We do not owe the debt of continuity to our ancestors, but to the unborn generations. Our past is gone and those of us alive who participated in the liberation war must know that like everybody else, we also need to excel today if we are to earn any respect. If past glory does not move to another glory, it slips into oblivion, and when overplayed or abused, past glory can transform into derision.

Our errors, misdoings, mistakes or excesses of today cannot be washed away by the mere fact that we did glorious feats when we brought down the British colonial empire four decades ago.

There is a sense of responsibility lacking in most of us today. Not many of us are cognisant of the need to ensure that future generations are paid the debt of leadership responsibility. It is tempting to pride ourselves in historical facts, including the fact that we are entitled to our land because of who our ancestors were.

Our ancestors owed this land to us, and equally we should be thinking more about our children, and their children’s children. We have intoxicated our collective conscience with the glories of the past, and many times we have done this at the expense of the time and effort we need to be investing into the present and the future.

There is this bitterness in our young generation of today that every single member of the older generation must be ashamed of.

I am asked many times by youngsters of today if the opportunities that were availed to my generation were any worse than the opportunities we are availing to the young people of today.

Naturally, most of these youngsters imagine that the opportunities could only have been worse, because from a logical viewpoint that must be the order of inheritance — where every generation passes to the next a better standard of living.

It is sad that my colleagues from the University of Zimbabwe unanimously agree that the UZ of the 80s had better welfare for students than the UZ of the 90s, and that the UZ of the 90s was way better than that of the first decade of the 2000s, and that also was better than the current UZ.

Of course, information technology has changed for the better, but the quality of education has not been transformed for the better simply because we now have the Internet. Both the students and the teaching staff are languishing in economic deprivation, and the university infrastructure has been deteriorating ever since, not to mention mere subsistence of the student.

Legacy is not something we get buried with; it is not something we just entitle onto ourselves or dedicate to our departed ancestors. Legacy is for future generations, and it is important that we all understand that the choices we make for ourselves today have a direct bearing on the future of the country we will live behind us.

Today we are where we are as a nation because of choices made by our leadership and ourselves in the recent past. We do not have a currency of our own because of choices we made in the recent past, corruption is rampant and alive because of choices we made in the recent past. We are polarised as nation because of choices made by our political leaders and their supporters. We are disunited as people because our leaders are making deliberate choices to disunite us, and indeed we have generational fissures in our society because we have chosen to live in a nation where one generation considers itself superior to the other, because of a history made before the other generation was even born.

Starting with myself as a writer, I have asked myself if the keenness to have my presence felt is the right motivation to carry out the art of political writing, or is it the science of it? When I started writing, I did so with the sole aim of making sure my absence will be felt after my inevitable departure. It was just attention seeking, selfish identity seeking to a good extent.

It is good to be remembered like the late Sam Munyavi, Masipula Sithole or Willie Musarurwa; so I said to myself, like them I will write in newspapers.

I have now come to realise how vacuous that kind of selfishness is, and I believe I have retraced my priorities significantly.

I now understand that I write for a cause, not for applause, to express not to impress, to benefit, not to deprive, to inform, not to mislead.

Knowing for a fact that I will die one of these approaching days, the desire burning in my heart is to create through my writing something that will not only last for posterity, but something that will give an unending benefit to future generations.

I have a few young people I have helped and mentored into the art of writing, and some of them are excelling well as book writers. I hope one of these days I will be able to establish a consultancy centre for political writing skills.

The imperative for fidelity and excellence calls on all of us. It calls on those presiding over our politics, it calls on those presiding over matters of religion and faith, it calls on those of us appointed or anointed to make governance decisions, and it calls on each and every one of us carrying the title of a parent.

Zimbabwe is a sick society today, and its recovery does not lie in the hands of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his deputies. Neither does it lie in opposition leader Nelson Chamisa. Our hope lies in parents, teachers, professionals, farmers, students, politicians, clerics, and indeed in all of us doing something towards the recovery path of this great country. What can we do for our country is the question we must address.

We must understand that there is just no escape — the next generation will have to pay for our violence and our intolerance. Our children and our children’s children will pay a heavy price for our selfishness and our recklessness.

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