The very first thing that every Zimbabwean parent, better yet African parent must teach their children is that responsibility starts with the parents, then each and every individual in the home.
The home, it’s leadership, individuals and their contributions determine the condition of the nation.
Any nation that is failing is an illustration of parents and families that are failing to lead and make meaningful contributions to the nation.
Any parent who seeks to teach their children to consume where they did not produce, reap where they did not sow and blame where they have not taken responsibility for their own actions, is a parent with no leadership, symptomatic of the problem we have in Zimbabwe [Africa].
Parents, must further teach their children that:
• economies are built by the contributions of the families of the nation. They don’t just create themselves.
• To have fuel in the nation, it requires citizens to produce so that they have capital to invest in innovation, companies, supply chains, technologies and foreign currency reserves to supply fuel to citizens at affordable prices. South Africa under isolation bought the Fischer Tropsch technology to produce fuel from coal from Germany.
• Citizens must attend council meetings and call for town hall meetings with their public representatives to lobby councillors, parliamentarians and government officials for favorable policies to supply fuel, energy and any other needs they have in society.
• Societies with true leadership from the family do not wait to vote to participate in governing their democracy.
• Where their government representatives do not deliver what they elected them for, they must pressure their political parties at branch meetings to recall them.
• And in a country under sanctions, fuel is always a challenge to acquire because it’s controlled by the same countries that imposed sanctions on the country, hence citizens must stand with the nation against sanctions.
Our children must be taught that:
• banks only work when citizens produce value, earn, save and bank in national banks as a collective or in large numbers, to keep liquidity in the banks. Banks don’t just automatically have money in them.
• They also work when the wealthy citizens who manage or own banks have the patriotism and leadership not to corrupt and destroy banks like Muthuli Ncube, Wingirai, Boka, Timba, Kamushinda and the ENG boys did by plundering bank clients.
• Additionally, they must be taught that banks in countries under economic sanctions do not function with ease because sanctions target financial institutions. Hence Africans must unite to create an African financial system backed by the true wealth and resources of Africa, not to rely on our colonizers.
We must teach them that:
• Currency value is never stable in a country where citizens and government import more than they produce or where people make money by selling local currency or foreign currency without creating real value.
• Currency prices are not stable in a country where citizens like Ecocash management and agents, lack responsibility, ethics, morality, leadership and patriotism, hence they don’t hesitate to make 6000% profit at the expense of fellow citizens just for returning people’s money in cash.
• prices of goods are not stable in a nation where citizens consume more than they produce or they import more than they export.
• Traffic lights don’t work in a country where citizens do not pay taxes on all they earn or where they externalize money illegally and don’t invest in building businesses, production or job creation at home because then the government has no money in its coffers to invest in infrastructure and maintenance.
It must be reiterated to the kids that:
• food and medicine don’t grow on trees but they must be invested in, invented, manufactured, produced and bought.
• Inform them that traditional food and medicines will cost less, demand less foreign currency and have more health benefits than foreign chemical products.
• Medicine and food can only be affordable if families live healthy lives, they come together with other citizens to protect their organic seeds and forests; they grow organic food and indigenous plants in an environmental friendly way, then harvest and export to generate forex rather than buying expensive cars.
• President’s and leaders can be criticized but constructively in the same way parents want to be criticized constructively.
Moreover, politicians can only be criticized after parents and citizens in society have played THEIR role of participating in politics: attending council meetings, petitioning their MPs, holding their public representatives to account through participative forums, writing proposals to parliament, being ethical and raising ethical family members who will be the future leaders. It also includes them marketing their country to make it attractive while fighting sanctions, leading civil society groups to invest, invent, produce solutions for national problems, regenerate morality in their communities to contribute to the country they want to see.
Children must be educated to know that if they want politicians not to be corrupt they must build a country driven by business and investors. A country where politicians are not role models, to stop the nation giving too much power to politicians, money changers and a few individual business people like we have given to Strive and the EcoMafia.
• They must know that good service delivery comes from citizens investing money, skill and time in their economy to ensure it has functional businesses, jobs, services, products and tax payers that ensure government has tax contributions, skills, competencies, public-private partnerships and money in its coffers to build, fight corruption and develop.
• Parents must invest in the schools, varsities, libraries, clinics, hospitals and shops they used, while collecting investment with others to build new ones to ensure that their children have good facilities to use in future. This will also set an example for what the children need to do for their children.
Black Zimbabweans have not done this then they lament that the country is dilapidated......That’s lack of individual, family and community leadership.
• Parents and families must maintain, renovate and beautify their own homes before expecting everything else in the nation to work when their homes are not working.
Teach kids that when someone complains about others and the country, ask to go and see their home first.
Just going through the avenues and suburbs in Zimbabwe shows that Zimbabweans have no ability to build a nation: look after roads, power stations, hospitals and factories, until they learn to maintain their own homes.
And finally we must teach our children that we don’t build our countries by running away from the problems of the nation to leave them for others or the worst of our society to solve.
We can not leave the nation in the hands of destructive ghetto youths like Sikhala and Chamisa and expect a country that works. They grew up pulling each other down in the township, what are the chances that such types can pull up a nation?
We need kids who had flowers and lawns at home, those who played team sport at a high level, those who understand the importance of collaboration to rise to take the nation forward.
We also need the village kids who shared food from one plate, the ones producing everything we eat and all the minerals, the ones who know how to produce, those who remember our cultural ways and history to rise up and redeem the ghetto youth messed up by Bronko and the kudira jecha destructive mentality which is killing us.
We build a country by uniting, loving our country, loving each other as citizens, leading collectively, holding hands with each other and building the nation together by defending our nation jealously from foreign invasion; protecting our women, children and the most vulnerable of our society.
Then we invest, save, innovate, build, farm, mine, manufacture and pay the debts of the nation together. This is what is required to build a great nation.
Without that, we don’t deserve a nation and by deduction, we don’t deserve to live because we can’t lead ourselves.
MwanaWaMutapa
