Zanu PF escalating war of the minds

Dr Obert Moses Mpofu

WARS that will be fought in future will be purely ideological.

He who controls people’s minds will have unmatched power.

Fresh battlegrounds in the new world order will be on ideas, beliefs and intellect.

We need to take all the necessary steps to guarantee our victory.

Our oppressors are hundreds of years ahead of us.

They inflicted slavery and colonialism on us, and that has historically placed us at a great disadvantage. The African was deliberately handicapped to ensure that he/she conformed to the will of the former colonisers.

Africans, in this current world order, stand no chance, unless they ideologically recondition themselves to be able to resist and launch an offensive in the ongoing war of the mind.

ZANU PF has been working tirelessly to ensure that this becomes a reality.

Our past, where we were brutalised and denied our land and other resources, should be enough inspiration for us to turn the tide against those responsible for our plight.

The life of the average African has been a wretched one, full of torment, displacement and loss of identity.

This is our crooked past that we need to and must correct — at whatever cost. There is nothing shameful about being African.

Those who do not want to see us prosper stripped us of our identity, spirituality and belonging. They attacked our self-esteem to ensure that we shun all that is associated with Africa and being African. When we dared to reverse all these colonial injustices, they unleashed a barrage of sanctions upon us, with a view to making us helpless. The younger generations, unbeknown to them, have suffered the most casualties in this war of the mind.

They have had their culture and identity stripped from them. There are clear attempts to ensure that their culture, identity and spirituality are erased from their minds and have foreign beliefs placed in their stead.

This is why concerted efforts are being made to free the mind of the African from the warped colonial thinking.

The African must possess an unquestionable sense of loyalty to his/her country, cultivated from the deep connection they have to the land.

Some say the umbilical cord of the African is buried in the ground to signify the eternal connection they have with the land.

We can never be separated from this land.

That is why most of our dear comrades made the ultimate sacrifice for their people to have total control of their land.

This is the simple but complex story of the African. However, the African was awakened and made wiser and stronger.

The African managed to acquire political freedom, something never thought possible, and in Zimbabwe’s case, we took it a step further and repossessed our land.

This awakening did not sit well with the former colonisers, and they have sought to extinguish it using all manner of methods and attacks on the African mind.

Nothing happens by accident.

The game of politics is similar to chess.

One must envision the future and be able to predict the opponent’s next move.

Failure to read between the lines often results in political doom and total failure.

One requirement for survival in this tricky minefield is the ability to see and seek what lies yonder.

Politics is far different from rocket science; it is often the simplest of things that can make a difference. But the game of politics is complex in its simplicity.

What may be applicable in one jurisdiction at one particular point in time may be irrelevant in another, and vice versa.

The curriculums we inherited and made the foundation of our children’s education were deliberately engineered to keep us under our oppressors. They made all efforts to perpetuate colonialism. Had it not been for our grit and sheer determination, the gains attained at independence would have long been eroded.

The African is not as daft as the oppressor thought. One of the ways of consolidating the gains of the hard-fought liberation struggle would be to expedite the process of decolonising the African mind.

This we have already begun.

And, as long as ZANU PF still exists, we will continue the fight, and we will win.

We have never in our history lost any fight we have set our minds to.

We will win the war of the mind.

Dr Obert Moses Mpofu is an academic and the Secretary-General of ZANU PF. He writes in his ow capacity.