Takura Zhangazha, a Zimbabwean civil society activist, has noted that with the passage of time, Zimbabweans are slowly forgetting Africans’ actual struggle against the imperialists.
He also said that is a disconnect between reality and Africans, particularly Zimbabweans had anticipated when they fought colonialism.
Zhangazha speaks ahead of the country’s Heroes Day and Defence Forces Day commemorations scheduled the 12th and 13th of August respectively. Zhangazha said:
Because of the passage of time between the liberation struggle and the present, together with highly partisan perceptions of what it is a national hero, we tend to forget the actual struggle against minority settler colonial rule. And its somewhat understandable. National imaginations do not find new life in dwelling on the past. Especially in our contemporary times where we appreciate more the immediate than what occurred in order to found the nation that is called Zimbabwe. Or in particular, we would not easily want to remember or acknowledge the immense personal sacrifice and bravery of those that took up arms in the 1890s and from the late 1960s-1980 against colonial repression. And even those that we in those liberation struggle periods we were either temporarily defeated by and eventually overcame do not prefer for us to have long memories of the same.
He also observed the need for Zimbabwe to rekindle the zeal to pursue the ethos and values of the liberation struggle which saw many people sacrificing everything they had.
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