THE credo of “decolonising the mind” should not be a country’s vision that is built to last forever, especially in the present form in which social and economic outcomes are ill-defined or unknown.
It has been over 40 years of pursuing this with no known outcome. It can’t be forever.
At best, this should be a mission achievable in a few years by having clear objectives and timelines, instead of running this in perpetuity to create relevance out of nothing.
The passion and commitment to decolonise the mind may be a very ideal goal to pursue, but in its current form, it is 360° defective and often just speaking to the converted.
We have been on this since 1980, so those aged 50 years and below who did not bear the direct brunt of colonisation are in it.
For them, the future is not determined by the men and women of the past.
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Their words and their actions only inform them of the struggles and obstacles they overcame. What matters to them is what we, as a people, choose to do.
It is incomprehensible that a country wants to achieve this lofty decolonisation goal by sitting a few adults in a party-owned school of ideology and believe the message will reach ghetto youths and peasant farmers.
Why would such an important vision, as we are meant to believe, be party-driven yet the desired outcome is to change the mindset of Zimbabweans across the political divide.
In 2024, which is 44 years later, this idea should have already been part of our ecosystem in education, governance, fashion and fabrics, food and drink, etiquette, laws, political models, design and architecture, family value systems, culture and language.
Who are we now? We are now just a giant Thaumactopous [mimic octopus] in that we are completely trying to mimic Western culture in food, fashion and fabrics, furniture and fittings, grooming and etiquette, governance systems, economic models and culture.
If the idea was to create a Zimbabwean, we have regressed.
We are not winning the decolonisation of the mind fight because we have no control of the source of “information”.
We are moving closer to being European and American such that putting a few people into a school of ideology and preaching in newspaper articles, which the converted read, cannot be a way to win the war.
Something radical is required not only to decolonise the mind, but to create a new mindset.
As a country, we cannot be decolonising the mind since 1980 and maybe continue doing so until 2099.
Current strategy of writing about it has failed and the school of ideology is just a tool for something else.
What is even more defective is that as a people, we control nothing, including but not limited to the people whose mindsets we want to change, the media and resources.
This high sounding idea requires huge resource investment, albeit in a short time.
Cities are going to resist anything party-driven, the rural people are averse to complexities from the current intellectual angle.
Those who attend these schools are already converted and the media chosen means nothing to a lot of people.
A lot needs to be done.
There is need to define what it is to be Zimbabwean, engagement of intellectuals to come up with the new, investment in making this idea mainstream, ensuring it is a national and not a Zanu PF project, resource allocation for grassroots, implementing a politically-neutral compulsory youth service, changing of curriculum, winning content consumption against the West, increasing local preferences as well as designing new governance and political systems that are strong.
The idea to decolonise the mind can be won, it must not be forever and require much better than now.
- Brian Sedze is a strategy and innovation consultant