The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Post Correspondent
Its Heroes Holiday and Heroes week again-2018! How time flies and how difficult it is to look back and look ahead at the same time!
The 13th and 14th of August were very special for me. As soon as the second day was over, a new one on the 15th came with my birthday.
My birthday this year, as it always does in other years, came at a time the country the nation is pregnant and a new political baby is about to be born. Some have seen the baby and already know whether it is a boy or girl. Soon they shall celebrate and shower gifts for the new-born baby.
Others are saying the baby is premature. The real one is yet to be born. This is the truth of the matter depending on what lens one is looking through. And it is my hope that whoever is watching from far or near is looking through the correct and desirable lens.
As we continue to remember our fallen heroes and heroines this whole week and every day of course, for we must never forget, it is my hope that people don’t forget that they are brothers and sisters belonging to one family called Zimbabwe.
It is my fervent hope too that as we continue to remember and reflect and remember to the end of the heroes’ week and month, we ourselves must become heroes and heroines in character and stature . . . heroes and heroines in thought and actions guided by insight and foresight.
Those who did not literally see the war about which the 13th and 14th of August were holidays must for one moment reflect on what the freedom of this country cost.
The currency with which this country was bought was blood and death . . . and those who died, died so that we could live.
And to continue to kill or die no matter who or what triggers that kind of violence is a sad negation of that for which our fallen heroes fell. They already died for Zimbabwe.
And lest we forget! Those who died did not die for a small special group of Zimbabweans. They died for everyone; the young and the old, men and women, the learned and unlearned, the rich and poor, the wise and unwise, the smart and the foolish. That is how grand and unordinary the story of Chimurenga is.
The war of liberation liberated everyone including the enemies who fought from the other side, for when freedom came, it made them too, free from political hallucinations and stupidity. When the war came to an end giving much deserved victory to the people of Zimbabwe, it also liberated the fools who thought they were political demigods favoured by God to be a perennial thorn in the flesh of the majority.
In every conflict where peace and sanity finally prevail they come to both the foolish and the wise.
They come to both the wrong and the correct. They come to both the victors and the losers. We are all better together than apart. We are all better united than divided. We are all better in love than in animosity. “Let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures…For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” These were the wise words of Khalil Gibrin.
Those values can never be too much to expect from each one of us. Zimbabweans deserve better. Time to prosper and be happy can never be too far from now. Zimbabwe is our only Canaan . . . a country of milk and honey. No one has the right to stop that milk and honey from flowing. The heroes we are remembering and always remember in my birthday month (August) did their part. Let us all each play our part.
As we continue to remember those who died for this country, for continue we must, let us remember too and be careful that our actions and reactions do not undermine the sacrifices of the fallen heroes and the birthrights of the living Zimbabwean people. Many people of Zimbabwe miss genuine peace, freedom and prosperity.
As we sat with our families and loved ones over the holiday, it is my hope that we were responsible in our thinking and vowed to desist from irresponsible utterances and excitements. It is my hope that we will continue to be responsible, intelligent and mature in our behaviour and thought. The history of Zimbabwe is born out of struggle and suffering.
There are young men and women who died so that everyone would be free . . . free to be responsible and not free to be irresponsible . . . free to prosper together and not free to be divided . . . free to build our beautiful country in peace, not pieces.
An abuse of that sacrifice and skewed perception of that selfless commitment of our freedom fighters to the ideal of one man one vote; one woman one vote, and a departure from it, willingly or unwillingly, purposefully or in ignorance, is a serious abortion of political morality and correctness.
As we remember our fallen heroes and heroines the rest of this month of August, it must be my prayer and yours that adult Zimbabweans, senior citizens of Zimbabwe, think of a legacy they want to leave the young ones of this beautiful country.
It is my hope that as we continue to remember, (hopefully we have not already forgotten what the past 13th and 14th of August were all about) the achievements of those who died to free this country, we also remember what we want those who remain to remember us for when we are dead and gone. Soon people will have forgotten what you said and what you did, but will never forget how you made them feel.
What some of us who witnessed the armed struggle, took part in it in various ways and know what it meant to be in the trenches; some of us whose parents, brothers and sisters were swallowed up by the ugly realities of the armed struggle, are worried about is not what is happening today, but indeed what will happen to our children tomorrow.
What lessons of life in sorrow or happiness must they learn from us today? What lessons of life in agreement or disagreement do they learn from us? What will they say about us and the armed struggle that took the lives of their grandfathers and mothers? Whose children are not children, grandsons and daughters of freedom fighters? No one in their sanity can exclude their parents who sired them and fended for them to live to fight, from the story of freedom.
Similarly no one can exclude other people’s sons and daughters from the great story of Chimurenga? Indeed every Zimbabwean fought this war from a different vantage point but all were part of the equation of struggle.
Short-sighted people are every day deleting the story of the glory of the liberation struggle, yet every day they speak about how our children, meaning their own children, must remember it with honour and pride forever. It will never happen.
Our children will kick our graves and urinate on them if as Zimbabweans we continue to behave like we are not born out of a bitter armed struggle that was against one common enemy of unrepentant colonial rulers and masters, and not against ourselves.
Should pride and prejudice, hunger for power, greed and selfishness, even genuine insanity, drown our voices of love and instincts for cooperation and dwarf our political honour and integrity?
Should our thirst, is it hunger for power whoever we are or think we are, or both, blind us to what peace there may be in humility? Do we ever think of what the consequences of our choices and actions today and now might be tomorrow?
As we remember the fallen heroes and heroines every day we do so, for it must be every day, it is my birthday hope, wishes and sincere aspirations that those who matter in determining the future of this country think about our children’s Zimbabwe tomorrow and not their Zimbabwe today.
Finally, it is my fervent hope that as we continue to reflect on our fallen heroes, we remember that after everything is done, felt and said, the sun will rise again tomorrow. And what will we say to each other, about each other and about one country which is the only one we all have and one God-given?
Happy Birthday to Me!
