Hunhu/ubuntu key to growth
…must be infused in all school subjects
‘Ini ndinonamata.’ and cities exposed to details of English and European club football and finding many takers.
Because we do not value who we are or have not been taught to value ourselves the effect is to alienate our population from local African events and to endear them to foreign ones.
Children in Gumbonzvanda, in Musami, Chitungwiza and Makokoba grow up rooting for English clubs and admiring European footballers, foreign movies and even foods.
When will they identify with things African?
When we begin to use our education sector to in Zimbabwe and Africa to build and sustain strong African brands in our different spheres of activity.
That is how we create a generation that is proud to be African.
By marginalising our local languages, we make growing generations believe their languages and cultures are inferior to those of Europeans.
We should be ashamed when our children fail Shona or isiNdebele, when they ‘break’ our indigenous languages.
This condemns Africans to a perpetual inferiority complex.
Independent Africans must stop perpetuating their own marginalisation by failing to defend their own African identity.
Educated technocrats who despise their African background will seek to create mini-Western institutions in their African countries that will only be accessible to the ‘educated’ minority.
But Africans need to stand up and be themselves and take their rightful place in the family of nations and that confidence will have its foundation laid in the school system.
They must have an identity that goes beyond the colour of the skin because that colour as we have seen can be changed.