The Sunday Mail
Call to restore culture default settings
Theseus Shambare
THE generation born after the turn of the new millennium — popularly known as Ama2000 — has become the centre of discussion for one reason or the other.
The group has a vibrant presence on the social scene, particularly the social media, and the members like to call themselves trend setters.
Popular culture has existed since time immemorial, but the youngsters seem to have taken it to a new high.
The younger generation “effectively” makes use of social media platforms to communicate about fashion trends or any other lifestyle.
This makes it easy for their influence to reach far and wide — within a short space of time.
However, social commentators argue this has come with a “devastating” downside as the social media “seems to promote” moral and cultural decay more than anything else.
Crimes of passion, horrific murder cases, pornography, rape, robbery, and drug and substance abuse seemingly dominate content on social media.
According to mental health experts, adverse effects of some activities trouble all age groups.
They argue that young adults, however, seem to suffer more if statistics provided by various mental health institutions across the country are anything to go by.
For instance, the average age of mental health patients at the Goromonzi-based International Wellness Centre is 25.
Peer pressure
“Zonelwa mvu yinye (the group will suffer for the sins of one),” reckons renowned author, historian and cultural guru Pathisa Nyathi.
“Westernisation has taken over the new generation in the guise of civilisation or modernisation. The youths seem to appreciate guidance from the social media more than our traditional cultural structures.”
Sexual intimacy, he added, used to be sacred and was a private act preserved for married couples, but this is no longer the case.
The police in Harare recently arrested 19 college students and a caretaker at a house in Dzivaresekwa that had been set as a venue for a “sex party”.
Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city, is also infamous for vuzu parties, whereby youths gather for activities that include binge drinking, drug use and sex.
“Once teenagers engage in these bad activities, there is a higher risk of disease infections and unwanted pregnancies. Once they discover either infection or pregnancy, they end up committing suicide or turn to drug abuse, as they cannot face the consequences. This is totally foreign,” argued Nyathi.
Cultural experts believe the younger generation now despises our traditionally accepted behaviours in favour of the Western-defined popular culture due to globalisation.
“Kudhara ikoko (that was then)” is part of the common street lingo youths use in making reference to any behaviour they consider archaic.
Isolation
The president of the National Council of Chiefs, Chief Mtshane Khumalo, said migration has led to fissures in families, which, in turn, have adverse effects on the younger generation.
“The village today is debauched and fragmented; individuals are increasingly isolated and are not eager to ask for or provide help to others.
“Family breakdown, economic pressures, long working hours and increased mobility have all contributed to families feeling less connected to extended family members and others around them,” said Chief Khumalo.
It is said it takes a village to raise a child, but the traditional leader reckons this is no longer the case.
He also notes that children now occasionally meet extended family members as they are only united at funerals or parties.
“In the past, when a boy grew into a teenager, he would be sent, from time to time, to his uncles’ homes, where he would confide with them, getting guidance in matters of life.
“Likewise, the girl child would be close to her aunties.
“Grandparents and aunties played huge roles in the upbringing of a child. It was not unusual for children to spend time away from their parents while in the care of extended family members.
“But at present, they spend more time with friends, some of whom are a bad influence,” said Chief Khumalo.
Chief Chundu (Abel Mbasera) weighed in.
“Some things that are considered normal in other countries might not sync well with local traditions, leading to children failing to have a proper identity.
“In the past, there was a great sense of community, where anyone who interacts with a child had some responsibility for them.
“I remember, in my youth days, if any elder caught you smoking or skipping school, it was upon them to discipline you in the same manner your biological parents would do,” recalled Chief Chundu.
These days, he said, children are only accountable to their biological parents, who, at most, would have limited time with them because of work commitments.
“The current foreign-adopted laws forbid me from reprimanding my neighbour’s child.
“Worse still, if I beat that child, I will be in trouble with the law. Our children have become the true bearers of immorality because they lack guidance,” lamented Chief Chundu.
He argued that children brought up in towns behave differently from their counterparts raised in the rural areas that still maintain tradition to a certain extent.
Way out
“Africans, particularly Zimbabweans, need to reject this notion of individualism. Being modern and civilised does not mean aping the West,” added Chief Chundu.
Social commentator Tatenda Chinoda said sanity will only prevail when the minds of locals are decolonised.
“Cultural erosion has been taking place for long. I prefer to call it social terrorism. Outside physical colonisation, the coloniser realised that without displacing us from our very own source of pride, bond and belief, we would remain stronger.
“In turn, they started by uprooting our culture and rooting their philosophy. Unfortunately, we have embraced the foreign influence without proper understanding of what the culture is all about,” said Chinoda.
He bemoans alienation and acculturation.
“When two elephants fight, the grass suffers. When two cultures fight, it is the youth who suffer.
“Our youths are now indulging in drug abuse, immorality and other ills because they are stuck in between, with no identity.
“Their identity is what they see on television and the internet.
“The education system — formal and informal, social and religious — must catch our children young. If the parents, the schools and the community are not educated, we are in trouble.
“We need to run aggressive programmes on our media channels to try and cultivate our ethos that defines us as Zimbabweans.”
Outspoken philosopher Joshua Maponga feels creating functional community structures that mirror the national history based on culture is the way to go.
“Reaffirming our cultural homes and investing in the village to allow our children to relive the virtues is the way to go.
“A cultural village represents a diverse group of people who contribute their knowledge, guidance, experiences, resources and time to help each other.
“There is no individualism in Africa; it is a borrowed principle. No man is an island here,” said Maponga.
The judicial system, he argues, does not help much in addressing the present challenge.
“We are struggling to handle ritual killing cases because, through the law, we are forced to pretend there is no ngozi (avenging spirit).
“But we all know spirits have to be appeased. Chiefs, traditional healers and spirit mediums must regain their power so that they lead the way.
“Ngozi is troubling our youths; it needs to be appeased, but we are told to go for rehabilitation. Are we not witnessing many people relapsing after successful rehab? It is because we are using a wrong formula for our problems,” said Maponga.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution to social issues. What can be a solution in the United Kingdom cannot be the same here because of our differences.”
Former University of Zimbabwe lecturer Dr Augustine Tirivangana asserts that there are several colonial pollutants that affected Africans in unique ways.
“Colonial religions and education systems that taught Africans away from their land as their chief means of production, then arbitrary cartographical dismemberment of the entire continent and, of course, the forceful imposition of European values of governance that put prime on individualism above the collective have had adverse effects on us.
“The only way to reverse this order is to return to the source through a protracted re-education agenda.
“Remember, India and China were colonised but not subjected to the white man’s religion and cultural alienation,” argued Dr Tirivangana.
In the book “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, which was published in 1949, George Orwell says: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
