Photo by Michelle Morrison (click picture for larger image)
FOR those who like to believe everything notorious they read about Zimbabwe, this educational facility in the heart of the Zambezi Valley, on the shores of Lake Kariba, was taken very recently. It certainly gives one a reality check on the negative scoops we receive regularly via overseas reporters sneaking in and out the country.
The students of all ages in this photograph are the future of Zimbabwe, and today there are thousands of children quietly attending similar schools in similar places, blissfully unaware of the vital role they will face tomorrow as they take their place in our adult world.
Schools in Zimbabwe today are so different to the schools many of us attended as children during the old days, ignorant that we were being programmed to play our part in the role of the country’s future. As White civil servants we would be expected to live our lives out as pawns of the British realm in Rhodesia.
The bottom line is that had all our schools in the country been multiracial then, it would not have been necessary for thousands from all races of the nation to sacrifice their lives in the Chimurenga II war. This was an unnecessary evil and many today still mourn their loved ones to whom they had no chance to say goodbye.
One of the first colonial rulings that President Robert Gabriel Mugabe agreed upon when he stepped up to replace the then Prime Minister, Ian Douglas Smith, of Rhodesia, was legislation that all schools henceforth should be multiracial. That was in 1980, and today? It is only through history books and tales around bitterly cold winter fires that we remind our children, that we, then the future of the country, were separated by the colour of our skin.
It is even inconceivable to some that Mutare now has a White Mayor once more, (Brian James, a man who was abducted during Chimurenga II, and now a dedicated member of MDC). One shocked White reader, in obvious disbelief, asked me, “How come? How can that be?” How do you explain to someone who left years ago that a new Zimbabwe has risen from the ashes, and only because many have chosen to persevere instead of seeking out greener pastures elsewhere.
Come the day the Mayor of Mutare is a White woman is the day when I will be surprised! Looking at this photograph I think it may be sooner than we think, because the colour issue in Zimbabwe is fast being eliminated.
God Bless our country. God Bless the New Government of Zimbabwe. May He hold in his palm forever our Teachers and Professors whose aspirations for a new Zimbabwe are epitomised in this photograph taken by a mother! To all the parents who gave permission for this photograph of another “little school in Kariba” to be published, we say, “Bless you, and thank you. We have been enriched by the presence of your children at our desks on this day.”
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