Ideology as a carriage to the future

08 Apr, 2018 - 00:04 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Teddie Bepete
Zanu-PF and President Emmerson Mnangagwa look certain to secure a landslide victory in this year’s harmonised election, and this is on the back of a new chapter of national optimism.

With the international community hailing the new administration, lucrative economic avenues have opened.

However, what has happened in our recent past has taught us that whatever achievements we score need to be religiously guarded from external and internal subversion.

The only way we can safely advance our nation is by nurturing an ideologically founded people.

Over the past years, it has been an embarrassment that some people in positions of national importance did not even understand the ideological conception of the centre, Zanu-PF, from where all government policy evolves.

The Chitepo Ideological College has become a hub of ideological inquiry, marking a resurgence of consciousness.

Chitepo Ideological College is not a propaganda school as suggested by certain media outlets, but it is a real centre of ideological advancement. It is a revival of the ethos of the liberation struggle, it’s aims and objectives; and the way forward.

Recent experiences on the global platform have indicated that overt neo-imperialism has tactically retreated and is regrouping.

The Libyans revolted against an economically egalitarian state never seen anywhere else because they lacked profound ideological orientation.

Now horrified by poverty and terrorism, they recall the colourful days of Jamahiriya with bitterness. Their predicament fits Maxim Gorky’s assertion that: “Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”

The Chitepo College is doing a paramount job, one that should have been done many years ago, to make the people the vanguard of their revolution. A State cannot exist without an ideology that shapes its policy planning and implementation. A people without a firm creed defining their footsteps can be are prey to saboteurs.

We can only reach our destiny if we treasure the creed that led us from colonial enslavement.

It is our unique historical experience that will help us shape a socialism that appeals to our people. What is important is to realise is that the net aim of socialism is to uplift the people in justice and equality.

If the opposition in this country does not have socialism, what then do they have which can change lives?  The age of quislings of foreign interests is a thing of political antiquity and has no room in a revolutionary country such as ours.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon, one of the early founders of what became known as utopian socialism, once said, “Communism is a society where each one works according to his abilities and gets according to his needs.”

Modern Chinese communist ideology bears certain similarities with some aspects of capitalism. At one time Russian leader Nikita Krushchev said about the future of capitalism and communism: “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you.”Krushchev was right.

Today the US and Britain have economies with many features of Communism.

Capitalism was doomed long ago when it allowed the concentration of capitalism in the hands of a few individuals. These are ideological lessons we need to grasp as Zimbabwe. As Chitepo Ideological School begins to be fully operational, there is a sigh of relief amongst revolutionaries who had watched with dismay as the ideological situation deteriorated in recent years. As I have said in my previous writings, our future as a country can only be assuredly achievable if we are led by ideologically oriented leaders.

Without such leaders, our presidency will have a difficult time in achieving the goals of the new dispensation.

Maxim Gorky said about the past, “In the carriages of the past, you can’t go anywhere.”

We have to travel with the carriages of the new dispensation so that we reach the doorstep of tomorrow.  Italo Calvino, in “The Invisible Cities” had this to say: “Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”

We need living branches on the tree of our freedom. President ED Mnangagwa requires an ideologically strong team and vanguard to advance our dream of a developed, modern Zimbabwe.

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