On the 15th of this month, the late liberation luminary and first chairman of the ruling revolutionary party, ZANU PF, Cde Herbert Wilshire Pfumandini Chitepo, would have turned 101 years. Happy belated celestial birthday to this anti-colonial stalwart.
Accompanying this solemn remembrance is the completion of the construction of the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology in Harare. The plan is to centralise it's national ideological tutelage function to district level.
Tracing its genesis from the liberation days as early 1975, the then Whampoa College was renamed in honour of Cde Herbert Chitepo in 1977 by the late Josiah Magama Tongogara. Chitepo had been assassinated on March 18, 1975. While the instigation for the school to be brought life in 2016 at the behest of war veterans, the Second Republic fast-tracked its plan of action in 2017.
As a cadre-development machinery of the nationalist agenda, the school contributed to the successive electoral victories of the ruling party during the 2018 and 2023 Harmonised Elections respectively.
Therefore, it is no mistake that the school's principal, Cde Munyaradzi Machacha, was recently appointed the ruling party's National Political Commissar.
Outside his erstwhile commissariat directorate role, Cde Machacha's redeployment of ideology as a tool for ZANU PF reconstruction in the aftermath of Operation Restore Legacy formulated the strategic direction for the party to pave its continuity unabated.
Since 2017, the school's operations were mostly mobile, even under the circumstances, its curriculum presence in our statecraft has given an anti-colonial impetus to the Second-Republic's policy formulation in the wake of Party Supremacy over Government.
National Agenda Formation
The Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology premises to be officially opened soon gesture the much-needed foundational state to our national good governance desire. With such an ideological institution, pro-nationalist/anti-colonial discursive framing of governance will be realised.
Over the years, issues of democracy, governance and human rights have been arrogated by neoliberal reactionary forces as part of challenging the land reform programme, whose success continues to agitate vestiges of Rhodesian monopoly capital.
The growth of our economy, in the face of the illegal sanctions, continues to work to the chagrin of our everyday factionally degenerating opposition.
Chitepo: A Parable Human
Now with the Chitepo think-tank in place, far-left ideas will be given prominence to the inevitably erasure of cosmetic anti-land reform underpinning reflections on democracy, rule of law, public administration and market dynamics.
The school's function is reflective of the ideological predisposition which was epitomised by Chitepo's service to the cause of our national independence.
The late national hero, Cde Chitepo, was a proponent of the African majority's fight against inequality perpetuated by the racist regime.
He fought for the restoration of the Black majority's dignity. As a public administrator, prior to abandoning the his career as a prosecutor, his professional footprint was instructive of the morality expected of public office bearers.
Chitepo fought for economic justice. The lifelong lesson from this attribute to his disciples is that the majority must have their rightful share to the means of production.
And under no circumstances, the majority must never be servitude external economic control.
Chitepo taught that independence without the land would be meaningless hence the popular Third Chimurenga dictum: "The Land is the Economy and the Economy is the Land".
Towards a Chitepo Pedagogy
The Chitepo School of Ideology should be seen as an intellectual wing of the party whose function is to radicalise the populace for the fall of capitalist driven inequalities towards a just socialist future for our people.
The school should also be considered as a hub for national strategic thinking. Through its pro-people epistemic tilting, the school must be able to break down the anti-imperialist ideological complexities to the last man in the land.
Its thought proliferation must find lodgement in each corner of our country in the same way Chitepo's illustrious contribution still touches our lives today.
Why Ideology Matters?
Ideology is the foundational pillar to nation-building. Without ideology a nation has no existential pillar. This explains why Tanzania still prides itself in Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's Ujamaah (egalitarian) philosophy. On the other hand, the existential clarity of imperialism as an idea is the reason why we continue to see colonial states as models of modernity.
The coming of the school to life gives assurance to the longevity of our liberation legacy -- and all the facets of national identity it embodies.
The Chitepo School of Ideology serves as a barricade to imperialist intrusions, which have long created a superficial split patriotic consciousness to our people and its consequent intermingling incongruent claims to national belonging.
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The school must evoke the nationalist pedagogy which unites us beyond ethnic, class and gender binaries. It must uphold that long lasting essence of a racial consciousness, which forms rationality to grapple with the inequalities which Africa and Africans continue to face in a (unipolar) global village.
Shaping Patriotism
The school must not be narrowly misconstrued to be a ZANU PF propaganda machinery. No! This revolutionary think tank must be reimagined as a lens with which the MaDzimbahwe view themselves and the world around them.
Our embracement of being Zimbabwean must be organically grounded on those ideas which unite us beyond externally determined terms of what it means to be unflinching patriots.
In other words, our yardsticks of patriotism must be founded on the lifelong lessons of those national matriarchs and patriarchs whose contribution to the birth of our nation stands the test of time.
We must all aspire to be like Chitepo.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is Director International Communication Services in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. He writes in his capacity as an avid follower of Herbert Chitepo's anti-colonial exploits.
