Regime change invades pupils’ textbooks

The Patriot

By Mashingaidze Gomo

30 March – 5 April

The Coltart story in The Herald issues of March 21 and 22 makes interesting reading.

Under the Education Transition Fund, UNICEF sponsored Zimbabwean schools with textbooks to the commendable ratio of one book per student.

The tender to supply the books was awarded to Longman Zimbabwe.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education, Sports and Culture alleged tender procedures were flouted because Longman Zimbabwe turns out to be a mere front for Longman International (UK).

Coltart denies involvement and in his defence, UNICEF claim they followed their own procedures and preferred the UK front over local companies.

Asi kuhwanda nemunwe, because the bottom-line remains that in a supposed act of goodwill to Zimbabweans, it is awkward that alien procedure that does not benefit them should take precedence over local procedure that can benefit them.

In this respect, I have found it necessary to go back to an observation I made in an earlier submission that at the formation of the MDC in 1999, the Rhodesian appointments of: Coltart for legal adviser, Eddie Cross for policy chief and Bennett for treasurer, spoke of ‘massive handholding’ of a myopic Tsvangirai, that left nothing to chance in pursuit of regime change.

It was a brazen claim of ownership of the MDC project by the West.

Today, I feel the Coltart scandal has just vindicated me.

I have come across the textbooks given to secondary school students and every one of them has been prefaced and signed by Coltart.

The preface reads:

“This textbook is a gift from Zimbabwe’s friends in the international community which include (in alphabetical order): Australia, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Through the generosity of these countries and our ability to work together in the education transition fund (established by the ministry of education, sports and culture in September 2009), we have already over seventeen (17) million textbooks to all primary schools. It is now the turn of secondary schools and several million textbooks like this one are being distributed countrywide to schools.

“…The future of Zimbabwe depends on your generation. My hope is that the provision of this textbook will inspire you to study hard and through that you will play a significant role in transforming Zimbabwe into the jewel of Africa .

“Senator David Coltart

Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture

July 2011.”

And, it is important to note that Australia, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and USA are the bloc of countries that unilaterally imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe in a bid that contests black empowerment through equitable redistribution of the country’s resources in a manner that reflects black majority rule.

In essence the bloc is contesting the legitimacy of African sovereignty and the country’s future as represented by black children.

One critical principle informing the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that gave birth to the current Government of National Unity (GNU) was the global recognition that there are sanctions against Zimbabwe, that the sanctions are illegal and that they must go because they interfere with our sovereignty and are detrimental to the development of Zimbabwe.

The recognition was also an unambiguous identification of Zimbabwe’s enemies as those who imposed the sanctions and are even as I write this statement refusing to remove them.

Three years after the GPA, the sanctions have conversely been widened (by these ‘friends’) to include the country’s diamonds with the intention of hamstringing Zimbabwe’s economic recovery.

And, the painful irony of the thing is that the ‘honourable’ Coltart became minister in the Government of National Unity courtesy of the tragedy created by those sanctions.

In that light, Coltart’s preface irrefutably comes across as a very surreptitious regime change agenda, which the nation should not take lightly.

Education constitutes first line defence of any nation.

The nation’s classrooms are in essence its briefing rooms.

It is through education that a nation plans what it wants to be.

And, the tragedy unfolding right before our eyes is that we have entrusted that critical task to an enemy agent, and the brief they are getting is that our enemies are their saviours!

Our children are being instructed to show gratitude to those who hate us (their parents); those whose illegal unilateral sanctions are making it impossible for us to meet their educational needs and to choose what we want them to be as informed by our bitter colonial experience.

And, while what I am suggesting might be viewed by some to be mweya wechinya, the truth of the matter is that it is not.

I am actually invoking the same principle that legally binds all manufacturers of tobacco to warn those, who enjoy smoking that: ‘Smoking is hazardous to health’.

The only difference is that we are here talking of an ideological hazard, with the long term capacity to destroy the whole nation.

In that light, it indeed becomes imperative that Coltart’s preface should tell our children that our capacity to buy them textbooks on our own has been interfered with by the same people, who are now coming to them as angels.

Honesty must prevail on him to also tell the black beneficiaries of this textbook gesture that it is coming from people who wish their parents ill.

It is indeed perfectly within our cultural rights to expect this strange custodian of our culture to also warn our children kuti: Zino irema, rinosekera warisingadi. Or,kuti itsitsi dzeyi tsvimborume kubvisa mwana wemvana madziwa?

And, as a lawyer, professionally bound to tell ‘the truth and nothing but the truth’, the ‘self-proclaimed Rhodesian liberal’ must also put it on record that the nationalist Zimbabwean Government’s commitment to the education of Zimbabweans has an irrefutable precedent.

The first commitment of the nationalist government was to put in place an infrastructure that ensured free education for all black children whom he (Coltart) had helped to marginalise by force of arms. And, all the MDC fragments are predominantly led by beneficiaries of that free education.

And, in the instance of there being no way of proving Coltart’s involvement in awarding the textbook tender to Longman Zimbabwe, (fronting for Longman International — UK ), it must be conceded that the preface on the textbooks certainly leaves his credibility on slippery ground.

The long and short of the issue is that Europe and North America are in dire economic recession and are looking outside for solutions to recover.

They have already occupied Libya for its oil and are using it to cushion the austerity of their own recovery measures.

It is the Libyans, who are now bearing the austerity for them. And, when you come to think of it, it is consistent with the historical trend in which Africans have traditionally borne all European economic austerity measures from slavery to space age.

In the case of Zimbabwe, those who contributed to the Education Transition Fund could simply not countenance a situation where Zimbabwean companies benefited from the arrangement.

They made the business benefit their own kith and kin in Europe.

And, as a parting shot, I would like to insist that it is imperative for Zimbabweans not to rely on the sweet ‘charity’ words of our enemies for truth.

Let us read the ground around them for the real truths.

Let us go back to Chitepo’s warning that the Rhodesian settler ‘…can and truly should be looked upon really as the immediate local agents of a huge international capitalistic manoeuvre to control and continue to exploit the resources of Zimbabwe in which they include ourselves.’ Coltart has just proven that, and we do not need a ZINATHA prophecy to tell us how MDC would help the West to loot our wealth.

Coltart is already showing the way!

Coltart’s preface is a regime change suggestion or regime change investment in our children and it is not far-fetched to read it this way:

‘The future of Zimbabwe depends on you, the generation sponsored by those, who sanctioned your parents. My hope is that the provision of this textbook will inspire you to study hard and through that you will play a significant role in regime change.’

In the Western world that sponsors Coltart, that is how it would be read, and he would have been asked to resign.

If he had prefaced all textbooks in British public schools with a message of gratitude to British friends from Iran or Kaddafi’s Libya, he would have been jailed.

This is true!

 

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