What good can come from Nazareth?

Now there is no Zanu-PF to insult, no President to deride, no Government man to blame – not even a Dokora – and no First Lady to parody.
For career opposition politicians and activists, life was so much simpler when all they had to do was scream “Mugabe must go!”
Now there is nothing to scream about. And so the new Government must be criticised for the sake of criticising it.

The Herald of December 8, 2017 carries the improbable yet inspiring story of 53-year-old Mrs Letty Mhora, who in January 2017 enrolled as a Grade One pupil at Mhangura Primary School.

She will write Grade Seven examinations in 2023 when she will be 59-years-old. Most of her fellow candidates will be 12.

Like a polite pupil, Mrs Mhora says, “My teachers are Madam Kauta and Madam Mudziviri. They are doing a wonderful job as I can now read and write, which I could not do when I enrolled at the beginning of the year.”

Her fellow module-mates are also grown men and women, 14 in total, and they too contend with the challenges other pupils face – such as finding money to pay school fees – in addition to raising children and grandchildren.

They are part of the beautiful story of Government’s non-formal education drive. Primary and secondary schools stand directed to establish facilities for non-formal education in line with Section 75 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe (the right to education), Statutory Instrument 371 of 1998 and Chapter 25:04 of the Education Act (as amended in 2006).

Non-formal education speaks to adult literacy, the Zimbabwe Adult Basic Education Course, functional literacy, open and distance learning and Part-Time and Continuing Education (PTCE).

Most recently, the person driving this was every Zimbabwean parent’s favourite minister Dr Lazarus Dokora.

Okay, maybe not too many people loved Dr Dokora the minister. Truth be told, very few did. His is the story of great ideas killed by lousy communication.

In this PR disaster lies an object lesson for President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new Government. But that is not the subject at hand today.

Teaching an old dog new tricks is what I’m concerned with. Some say it can’t be done. Cde Victor Matemadanda would say “it’s one minus two – it can’t!”

Tales such as Mrs Mhora’s abound in Zimbabwe. Everywhere, every day, “old dogs” are learning new tricks.

Early this year, The Sunday Mail ran the story of Mr Ignatius Chiketa Kanengoni, aka Chief Mashayamombe of Mhondoro.

At the age of 82, he was reading for a Doctor of Philosophy degree with the Zimbabwe Open University. In 2013, aged 78, he had graduated with a Master’s degree in Peace, Leadership and Conflict Resolution.

Chief Mashayamombe got his first degree (Bachelor of Arts in Sociology) from the University of South Africa in 1995.

What made this “old dog” want to learn a new trick?

Well, in 2010 he applied for a post as a part-time lecturer at the Zimbabwe Open University and was told that he needed to have a Masters.

“I remember my first examination as a Master’s degree student. These examinations require you to be a fast writer, a technique I had long forgotten. I sat four courses, but only passed one.

“At one point, I contemplated dropping out of the programme, but soldiered on by brushing such thoughts aside. I pulled up my socks and never failed a course again. I came up with a study timetable under which I would utilise night-time for my studies and reserved day-time for chieftainship duties. This is the routine I follow up to now.”

As for the PhD, his take is that traditional leaders are side-lined by conventional legal and governance systems.

“I have had judgments that I passed nullified by the High Court because of customary law/common law clashes. Prior to my PhD studies, I researched and found out that 63 percent of chiefs were facing the same challenges I was facing with the courts of law. I am proposing two parallel systems for our judicial system: One for common law and the other for customary law.”

It is never too late to learn.

Some amongst us, hard-wired to oppose Government, are finding the changed times difficult to cope with.

A group of patriotic soldiers have been able to rally a nation around a single cause of genuine economic growth and development.

Someone from Mapanzure has stepped to the fore and spoken all the right words and started shaping a national economic discourse that does not trouble hearts.

Now there is no Zanu-PF to insult, no President to deride, no Government man to blame – not even a Dokora – and no First Lady to parody.

For career opposition politicians and activists, life was so much simpler when all they had to do was scream “Mugabe must go!”

Now there is nothing to scream about. And so the new Government must be criticised for the sake of criticising it.

Then we have those best captured by Cde Sheuneni Kurasha thus: “There are some people who have been benefiting from the Zim crisis & the prospects of turning the corner is for them a personal inconvenience.”

We all know many have made money from a nation’s toiling. Now the donors ain’t signing big cheques no more. The meal ticket is gone.

Others are dyed-in-the-wool pessimists who will tell you that every silver lining has its dark cloud. They can only think of their birthdays as irrefutable proof that mummy and daddy did something naughty behind closed doors.

They believe nothing good can ever come out of Nazareth, or in this case Mapanzure.

As a nation, we should not despair because such will always be in our midst.

The good thing is that Mrs Mhora and Chief Mashayamombe teach us all that it is never too late to learn.

And in learning and in patience, we may find that from Nazareth a messiah may emerge.