The Sunday Mail
Dr Thokozile Chitepo
Unity Day is extremely important.
The whole focus on unity itself is fundamental to some of the reasons why President Mugabe created and mandated a special ministry to focus on preserving and promoting culture as it is so important to our identity as Zimbabweans.
Basically, unity is finding ways to make people feel included; the feeling of togetherness, being connected and respected, and respecting people’s diversity.
Each of us is unique.
We have identities, beliefs, family customs and ways of celebrating and mourning.
In addition, we have ways of expressing anger or how happy we are.
So, when we talk about unity, we want to be sure we feel an acknowledgement amongst ourselves of those differences, even as we are together.
You can come from one part of Zimbabwe, different religion, tradition or beliefs, but we recognise that we are together as one. The unity is national, recognising that we are all citizens of a country called Zimbabwe, and that citizenry is identified, principally, by the unity we share.
When there is a threat to unity, there will be a threat to people.
Feeling that they have protected what belongs to them means a lot to them. Every nation wants to make sure its people are as united as possible.
It’s a sign that it’s a family.
The biggest struggle that families face is trying to keep themselves together as the more discord there is, the less resemblance of what families do together, supporting each other.
However, unity brings that fundamental sense of self-connectedness.
In that vein, Unity Day is also important as Zimbabweans come together, expressing why we care for each other in spite of our individual uniqueness.
Why should it matter that one comes from, say Plumtree or the North or East? Why should you care for them? Why should it matter?
It is something from the national offices, in the national spirit. We must find ways of caring for each other.
At leadership level, the Unity Accord seemed to represent the Ndebele and Shona.
But the truth of the matter is we are all aware of the many other smaller ethnic groups that we have amongst us, and the voices of the people who feel excluded have been there.
The Constitution is absolutely clear on the fundamental, basic recognition of all Zimbabweans and their expression in many ways, including acknowledging 16 languages as Zimbabwe’s official languages.
We could have decided to be English, Ndebele and Shona – the three – but that’s officialising other languages.
We have to work on it as it is one thing to have it in the Constitution and another to ensure all groups are represented in our education curriculum, books, and the media.
So, we expect that, especially with this particular ministry (of Rural Development, Preservation and Promotion of Culture and Heritage), because language policy and commitment to language is in the Culture Policy.
Culture manifests itself in many ways – in the education curriculum, publications, dances and the way you express yourself. The creation of this ministry and all its different linkages with culture promotion, fostering unity, integrity and inclusion have also helped a lot.
People will respect each other as there will have been investment in that area.
We are finalising our Culture Policy; there were countrywide consultations. We met with communities, teachers, traditional leaders and churches, and the two issues they raised were safeguarding our culture, and knowing and respecting each other’s cultures. That is where the unity is. There were many other issues, but those were the top two.
We already have the mandate from the Constitution, and the Culture Policy will mandate us on the many programmes that ensure we feel the unity.
That is one we would like to see a lot of; having more of the opportunities to express this unity. I am certain we can do more, with many strategies to make sure unity, as an important heritage, is protected and passed on to the next generation.
One such strategy is holding festivals, giving people a chance to see different forms of cultural expression.
The Unity Accord is very important to our heritage. We need to always be able to invoke the purpose of that unity.
Not just simply as a question of cultural expression, but that it was rooted in guaranteeing that we appreciate our differences, explicitly naming them.
Saying one is Shona, Ndebele, Tonga or Ndau is insufficient.
It is about actually being explicit: “What is it about you being Shona, Ndebele, or Tonga?”
It is something important that we must respect about you as this is where the differences come in. How our relations within ourselves broke down so much to the point that we say you come from the North or that you are a kwerekwere . . . it seems like a joke, but, in fact, what you invoke in people is more serious by saying all these people from a particular place behave in a certain way or don’t think in this manner.
So, giving examples of that is very critical. The one way of doing that is writing stories and documenting history about how relations broke down.
And also how we dealt with those tensions is important.
It is an exciting time because you can see that people are curious to know more about each other.
Within what we call conflict is how we deal with the situations.
If you had people saying Zimbabweans are very resilient, it is a form of how we deal with situations and that’s culture. It is a manifestation of our culture.
Resilience are the decisions about how we protect ourselves from certain situations, how we deal with them, how we protect ourselves from them. (We could have made the choice to be violent) but when we see it, we make a choice about how to deal with it, and those are the moments.
They are priceless.
Those moments when we decided we won’t be violent or we won’t reciprocate violence – that’s the form of resilience of a culture.
At the same time, you can say resilience can be expressed in another way like innovation. You can decide on that as a Zimbabwean society.
Another important aspect of our culture in Zimbabwe is determination. We are determined to solve our problems.
The message is that we have so much to be proud of, so many individual assets, the way we do things and the way we care for each other.
I encourage Zimbabweans to take care of each other.
◆ Dr Thokozile Chitepo is the Secretary for Rural Development, Preservation and Promotion of Culture and Heritage. She was speaking to our Reporter Harmony Agere regarding Unity Day (December 22, 2015).
